To one side of Eastport’s Quoddy Village is Rossport by the Sea, a remarkable – and reasonably priced – 80-plus acre family-friendly retreat created in 1987 by Ross Furman when he purchased the dilapidated and vacant 1790 Captain Jacob Lincoln farmhouse.
This is your greeting from the old Toll Bridge Road.
It’s definitely not your average motel, hotel, or cabins and campground, either.
The resort’s 32 bedrooms in 12 private sites have access to more than a mile and a half of shoreline and seemingly endless views. There’s also an organic farm working part of the grounds.
If you’re thinking of a visit to Eastport, I’d suggest booking there first, May through October. Not that there aren’t some other good options. Or maybe I’m just being envious.
Still, just walking around the grounds is delightful.
This lane leads into the grounds.Here’s what you’ll find in one of the barns.Here’s one of the cabins available for rent. The lawn leads down to the ocean.A whale vertebra sits on the deck of one of the cabins.I love the quirkiness of sculpture like this puffin.How about a decorated canoe? Go ahead, click on it for the inside view. I hope.
That said, you may want to put it on your list of vacation destinations to consider for next year and then make your reservations early, should you desire.
What distinct accommodations would you suggest for a traveler?
The Quoddy Dam has been used as a passenger ferry between Eastport and Lubec. It’s named as a joke regarding the 1930s public works project to dam up most of Passamaquoddy Bay and more. The Pier Pressure, meanwhile, has served whale watches.These two take some serious sails.
Downtown is right around the corner, but South Portland is in the opposite direction rather than Canada just ahead. Unless you get on a boat and start sailing around the bend down past Lubec.
While driving from Eastport to Lubec, kind of in the neighborhood, as it were, I got to thinking about how far you could get from one point to another in the same hour elsewhere. Sometimes, it led to a lot more options.
As I detail in Quaking Dover, my history of New England’s third-oldest permanent settlement, the odds against success for early European settlers were nearly overwhelming.
It wasn’t just the English, either.
The French made their first attempt just up the coast from Eastport, where Samuel de Champlain selected an island in what’s now called the St. Croix River at the western edge of the Bay of Fundy or, more specifically, its smaller Passamaquoddy Bay.
St. Croix Island, site of the ill-fated settlement, sits in the river separating the U.S. and Canada today.
The famed explorer was working for Pierre Dugua de Mons, a noble and Protestant merchant who had been given a fur trading monopoly in New France by the king.
Pierre Duguay had some big dreams.
In 1604 the expedition set about establishing a fortified trading post on the security of St. Croix Island and its tidal currents.
Here’s how the settlement on the island was designed. I’d say it was quite ambitious, especially compared to the small settlement that resulted in Dover, New Hampshire.The enterprise required many skills.Many of the workers were mere boys.
And then they settled in for the winter, ill prepared for harsh conditions that buried their compound under three feet of snow and iced in the river, cutting them off from fresh water and game.
The lack of fresh water, especially, was a fatal flaw in their plan.
By the time spring arrived, 35 of the French expedition’s 79 men and boys had died, many from scurvy. The remainder survived largely because the thawing river allowed Native Passamaquoddy to arrive and trade nutritious food in exchange for any remaining bread and other goods.
After the colonists’ health improved and ships brought new supplies and more men from France, they abandoned the island and relocated to what would become Port-Royal, Nova Scotia, soon the center of L’Acadie, or Acadia, a large and contested province of New France.
In 1607 the English then made two attempts of their own in the New World. Their Popham colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine fared no better, while the Jamestown settlement in Virginia managed to hang on.
In 1608, Samuel de Champlain successfully founded Quebec City along the St. Lawrence River. What we know of the St. Croix Island experience comes largely through his journaling.
Quite simply, we could have been speaking French here, had someone thought about drinking water earlier in the game. Or perhaps simply been listened to and respected.
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Sculptures at the St. Croix Island International Historic Site, Red Beach in Calais, Maine, are by Ivan Schwartz, Studio EIS.
While most of Eastport’s sardines were packed in cottonseed oil, some brands boasted of mustard, too, or of even smoking them first.
Even those that weren’t still might be smothered in a mustard sauce.
In 1900, J. Wesley Raye, the 20-year-old son of an Eastport sea captain, founded his mustard business in the family smokehouse in 1900 and moved it to its current site in 1903 to meet demand from the canneries.
Not just Eastport’s, either. Much of the family’s mustard, as the Raye’s website touts, was shipped by both rail and steamship, two means of transport long gone from the city. But, as they boast, their mill remains the last one in America to make mustard the old way. Theirs is made in small batches from mustard seed they’ve ground slowly on millstones made in France.
One of its many styles today.
If you don’t recognize the name, you might know the taste. It’s rebranded by some high-end labels.
The old mill is still in operation. Note the railroad boxcar at left.Yes, there’s more.Their downtown retail store is a bright spot on Water Street, selling much more than mustard alone.
Jnana's Red Barn 