Pride in Place

Some things are so tied to place you just can’t imagine one without the other. That’s the way it is with Raye’s Mustard and Eastport, Maine.  

 The easternmost city in the U.S., Eastport is a special place way Down East where 20 year old J. Wesley Raye started making mustard in 1900 to serve the city’s more than two dozen sardine factories and countless other canneries along the Maine coast. In 1903, alongside the Maine Central Railroad, he built a mill around a series of quartz grinding stones imported from France, the very same stones that are still in use today.

 Maine’s once-dominant sardine industry is long gone, and the population of Eastport is one-quarter the size it was in J. Wesley’s day, but the community remains a place of rugged natural beauty, resilience and pride.

Like Eastport, Raye’s Mustard has persevered, survived and continues to reinvent itself. Its award-winning gourmet and specialty mustards are now sold throughout the country to people who value authentic small batch-crafted foods. And the original stone-ground mill where Raye’s Mustard is still produced draws thousands of visitors to Eastport each year to see the only place in North America that still makes mustard the old-fashioned way.