"Official state historical markers form a smaller population, and early in my research I determined to read all of them. Texas dissuaded me. The Lone Star state has more state historical markers--nearly twelve thousand--than the rest of the United States put together. To read and digest one marker per minute would require 200 hours--five full weeks in the Texas office. At the other end of the spectrum is Maine, whose assistant director of historic preservation flatly assured me, "Maine does not have historical markers along its highways." Maine has markers and monuments, of course, not put up by a state agency, so the only way to read them is to drive every road in the state, keeping a sharp lookout."