Perry's Nut House is tourist stop and store on Old Route One

U.S. Route 1 in Maine

In the U.S. state of Maine, U.S. Route 1 is a major north–south state highway serving the eastern part of the state. It parallels the Atlantic Ocean from New Hampshire north through Portland, Brunswick, and Belfast to Calais, and then the St. Croix River and the rest of the Canadian border...

 in seaside Belfast, Maine

Belfast, Maine

Belfast is a city in Waldo County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 6,668. Located at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River on Penobscot Bay, Belfast is the county seat of Waldo County...

.

Opened in 1927, Perry's is a classic example of an American roadside attraction

Roadside attraction

A roadside attraction is a feature along the side of a road, that is frequently advertised with billboards to attract tourists. In general, these are places one might stop on the way to somewhere else, rather than being a final or primary destination in and of themselves. The modern...

. Located on the coastal road to Bar Harbor, Perry's features giant painted animal sculptures outside and, until recently, a display of exotic nut seeds and stuffed animals inside. Perry's also makes and sells traditional fudge

Fudge

Fudge is a type of Western confectionery which is usually very sweet, and extremely rich. It is made by mixing sugar, butter, and milk and heating it to the soft-ball stage at , and then beating the mixture while it cools so that it acquires a smooth, creamy consistency...

 candy by weight along with miscellaneous Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

 tourism-themed souvenir

Souvenir

A souvenir , memento, keepsake or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. The term souvenir brings to mind the mass-produced kitsch that is the main commodity of souvenir and gift shops in many tourist traps around the world...

s.

In 1997, a previous owner sold most of the original taxidermy

Taxidermy

Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...

 animals and other eclectic display items at auction. , however, the current owners of Perry's are attempting to buy back as many of the auctioned items as possible — mounted animals, nuts, etc. — that were part of the site's original display. Several original items have reappeared in the store, including a gorilla, a 30 feet (9 m) python skin and a very large stuffed albatross

Albatross

Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds allied to the procellariids, storm-petrels and diving-petrels in the order Procellariiformes . They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific...

.

A fund collecting donations to acquire a new elephant for the store has been established.

External links

• Roadside America entry
• Official website
• Story from the Maine Storytellers' Festival
• Perry's Nut House Closes
• Perry's Nut House on the Rebound - WCSH Television
  WCSH
  WCSH is the NBC-affiliated television station for Southern Maine and Northern New Hampshire. Licensed to Portland, it broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 44 from a transmitter on Winn Mountain in Sebago. The station can also be seen on Comcast and Time Warner Cable channel 6...
  
  - Summer, 2009