Driving into Gardiner, travelers are greeted with a sign welcoming them to where “history and progress meet,” a description also found on the “Grow with Gardiner” web page. The time has come for a new motto.

For starters, history and progress have not been faithful to Gardiner, as Saint Peter, Minn., West Chicago, Ill., and Tulsa County, Okla., also claim that the happy couple consort within their borders.

Of greater significance, reported sightings of progress in Gardiner are rare as a search for Internet startups, biotech research facilities and 3-D printing companies will confirm. A better case can be made for history, although tourists looking for where the Battle of Gardiner was fought or the Treaty of Gardiner signed are in for disappointment.

An obvious alternative motto would be “Home of Edward Arlington Robinson,” since the city already offers visitors an attractive brochure showing significant places in his life. While I am a big fan of Mr. Robinson, whose poems, unlike most written today, not only rhyme but can be understood, I question whether he should be the face of Gardiner.

Although it may be irrelevant that Robinson was not born here, since his family moved here less than a year after his birth in Head Tide, there is the troubling fact that as a young man, he abandoned Gardiner for New York and never moved back.

Some might argue that it is the subject matter of his poetry that counts, noting that his best works were based on Gardiner residents. I take the point but doubt it helps, as three of Robinson’s most famous poems are about a man who shot himself (Richard Corey), a hopeless drunk (Miniver Cheevy) and a worn-out womanizer (John Evereldown).

Some place names make choosing a motto easy. For example, Happy, Texas, describes itself as “The Town without a Frown,” Walla Walla, Wash. proudly proclaims that “The City was so Nice, They Named it Twice,” and Hooker, Okla., takes pains to let the world know that “It’s a Location, not a Vocation.”

Unfortunately, there is nothing about “Gardiner” that provides so obvious an answer.

Perhaps looking inward is the better approach. Recent trends in Gardiner suggest a secularization theme. One former church is about to become a hard cider distillery, another is a bed and breakfast, and massages are offered in what had been a rectory. How many other municipalities can provide visitors an afternoon of drinking and a place for a night of passion, followed by a morning rubdown, all in spiritual surroundings?

A motto based on this trend also could save money since, with a few word substitutions, the current signs could be retained. Thus, Gardiner could become the place “Where Pleasure and Piety Meet.”

If people are willing to scrap the “meeting” theme, another possibility would be “Gardiner — The Home of Holy Hedonists.” The Holy Hedonists could even double as the nickname for our athletic teams; one has to wonder what original thinker came up with the Tigers.

In the event these choices would offend some members of the community, other options should be explored. As a 35-year resident of Gardiner, I have been consistently impressed with the refusal of its residents to quit. Nowhere has this been more evident than on Water Street where, in addition to the perpetual rebirth of Johnson Hall, the failure of one business does not stop another from popping up in its place.

To be sure, some Water Street enterprises have had unusual business plans, such as the store that sold both tapestries and candy or the establishment where one could go in for a cup of tea and come out with a wedding dress. But if the plan was questionable, there was no doubting the proprietor’s can-do attitude.

Invoking the high mortality rate of Water Street businesses, cynics might argue for a motto using, with slight alterations, the statement Samuel Johnson made about a man who took a new wife shortly after the end of his unhappy marriage: “Gardiner, Where Hope Triumphs over Experience.”

But I prefer to be more positive. As a compromise that would capture the city’s never-say-die attitude while satisfying its boosters and detractors, I offer the following: “Gardiner, A City of Trying People.”

If you don’t like it, that’s fine, as my objective is to start the discussion, not end it. Indeed, the city might hold a competition for the most fitting motto, putting the leading choices out to a popular (or unpopular) vote.

In the meantime, visitors driving into town could be greeted with temporary signs saying “Gardiner — A City in Need of a Motto.”

Steve Diamond is a resident of Gardiner.