Big Jim Statue
Penobscot Marine Museum
On a summer day in June 2026, a small crowd formed at the foot of a man wearing yellow oilskins and rubber boots and holding a square sardine can reading “Maine Sardines Welcome You to Vacationland & Sardineland.” The crowd had gathered at the Penobscot Marine Museum grounds in Searsport to celebrate the restoration of Big Jim, a 40-foot-tall statue that served as an advertisement for Maine’s sardine industry when the plywood structure was originally placed along Route 1 in Kittery in 1959 and later was moved to the Stinson Cannery factory in Prospect Harbor.
Like Maine’s once booming sardine canning industry, Big Jim underwent a lot of changes through the twentieth century, getting a makeover from plywood to aluminum in the 1980s and changing messages on his sardine can. But unlike the sardine industry, which ended in 2010 when the last canning factory in the United States – Stinson’s in Prospect Harbor – shut down, Big Jim had more lives in him.
When a lobster company bought the Stinson property in 2011, Big Jim went from being a sardine man to a lobsterman, his can replaced with a lobster trap. The lobster company closed and for many years, Big Jim’s fate was uncertain, until the Penobscot Marine Museum asked to borrow Big Jim for an exhibit on the sardine industry. But not just to exhibit Big Jim in his deteriorating state. Instead, the museum helped spearhead a campaign to restore him to his former 1959 glory.
With restoration completed and celebrated at the museum, Big Jim will return to his Prospect Harbor home in the fall of 2026, this time with a plan in place to help preserve him for future generations.
Author: Stephanie Bouchard
