According to the map, it looked like a good road. I had just taken a lovely, very smooth one a few miles to the east, so I expected to enjoy more of the same. But when the pavement abruptly ended, I kept going. After fifteen or twenty miles of encountering no house or other vehicle, I finally came out on the state highway – one of three paved roads running east-west across the county. I did have to back up at one point and try the one intersecting logging road I encountered. Good thing my little Sonic has a compass on the dashboard array. It’s easy to get disoriented in hilly wilds.
Welcome to Washington County, Maine.
The drive had me remembering forays into the logging back country of the Pacific Northwest or even a “shortcut” in the ’50s along Devil’s Ridge in southern Indiana that was pure hillbilly, uh, perfection. I think that route’s long since been covered in asphalt. What a shame – it was timeless.
Long ago, I learned you can’t always trust maps, no matter how much you need them. A tourist site like a commercial cavern might be indicated on the wrong side of the road, or there might be a circle for a village that today is no more than a trio of houses.
Still, they’re pretty essential. As I said, there was one intersection on this trek where my car’s compass had me confounded. Checking the map, I realized I should have turned left and headed south, so I turned about and course-corrected. Good thing, too. According to the map, I would have spent the rest of the day heading into the sunset on a rocky dirt lane.
If I keep this up, I really will need to get a battered pickup or four-wheel-drive SUV.
The Maine coast is 3,478 miles, not including islands. They raise the figure to 7,000 miles.
I live on an island.
Just two miles away, as the crow flies, but an hour by land is the waterfront town of Lubec. One of the best ways for tourists to appreciate the coastal nature of Downeast is by taking the passenger ferry that runs between there and downtown Eastport. I promise you it’s much less crowded than Acadia.
We go down for a walkabout the town, a New Jersey-style pizza, and a sit in the brewpub’s beer garden. One day I watched seven gray seals cavort in the current. And then we catch a ride back, which runs along the other side of the channel from the one we followed down.
Folks from Lubec do something similar, including a stroll though Eastport’s art galleries.
Either way, you get fine insights the shoreline, history, and wildlife in a way you’d never get from land. There’s the Cargo Terminal, salmon farms, Roosevelt summer home, Treat Island. Maybe seals and eagles, too.
The ferry runs every two hours on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, weather permitting.
The Quoddy Dam is a friendly little vessel, named as a joke about the federal project that was quickly jettisoned.
Approaching Lubec.
At the dock. Treat and Dudley islands are in the background, with Eastport sticking out to the right.
The handheld rake was invented in 1910. I can’t imagine trying to pick large quantities of blueberries without it.
What’s harvested by the ton in Washington County is not just blueberries, but wild blueberries – lowbush, laced with small pellets of complex, concentrated flavor, rather than the big, juicy, cultivated highbush kind.
What grows here, I’ll argue, is tastier and richer than the more coddled kind I had previously known and even grown.
As you can see, traditional picking can be backbreaking work. But old-timers tell you it delivers better berries than the newer mechanized harvesters do.
Maine has a near monopoly in the production of the wild lowbush berries in the United States. Neighboring parts of Canada are also of note. Still, the output is only a fraction of what’s harvested from the domesticated highbush farmers in other states.
You can drive right past a blueberry barren like this and not know it’s loaded with ripe fruit.Here’s what a stop to look reveals.For a few weeks each spring, clusters of commercial honeybee hives are placed by the hundreds throughout the barrens. The electrical fencing is intended to keep bears out.
Just so you know.
What’s your favorite kind of berry? And your favorite way to eat (or drink) them?
Unlike the two most photographed and visited lighthouses around here – East Quoddy on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, and West Quoddy in Lubec, Maine, both of which have been featured here at the Barn – the remaining lighthouses I encounter locally are small-scale. They’re beacons, all right, but to call them houses may push the definition.
You be the judge. Here they are.
Cherry Island Light, New Brunswick, is the one we see most clearly. It’s an 18-foot-tall tower with a white flash every five seconds. As a lighthouse, it was first built in 1824.And at night it does this.Deer Point, New Brunswick, is a 20-foot tall tower with a two-second red flash every 10 seconds. The famed Old Sow, the largest whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere and second largest in the world, is just off its shore.Facing Deer Island, the Dog Island Light in Eastport flashes white/red every five seconds. As you can see, it’s no longer a house, much less manned.The Pendleberry Lighthouse, or St. Andrews North Point Light, in New Brunswick is glimpsed here from Robbinston, just up the Maine shoreline from Eastport.A “sparkplug” or “wedding cake” design, the Lubec Channel Light can be seen framed by the bridge from Lubec to Campobello Island from points in Eastport, though never this distinctly. I shot this in South Lubec, where it stands 53 feet above Mean High Tide and emits a flashing white signal every six seconds.Whitlock Mills Light on the St. Croix River in Calais is the northernmost light in Maine. It’s on private property, and I’m grateful to the owner who allowed me access. The second tower has both a bell and a foghorn. I find this 25-foot tower, despite its small size, particularly charming.
Though Eastport was settled relatively late – that is, toward the end of the Revolutionary War – it was instilled with a Colonial flavor by prominent early residents who were resolute veterans.
A continuing spirit of Tea Party and Minutemen makes Independence Day in New England feel different than those elsewhere. It’s not just the place of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World. It’s the region where thickheaded Yankees have always doodled.
Quite simply, history is palpably alive everywhere across New England.
Boston, of course, is the epicenter, but across the six most northeasterly states, local observations uphold distinctive traditions. Think of musketeers firing a round ever so often along the town parade route, along with fifes and drums.
As an independently enterprising oceanside village, Eastport soon had a reputation as a hive of privateering – that is, legalized piracy – and not-so-legal smuggling. That independent streak gets its own attention in the city’s annual Pirate Festival a week after Labor Day.
How joyous!
Unlike much of America, the city had frontline experience of the War of 1812. Fort Sullivan atop the bluffs surrendered to the British Navy in 1814, and Eastport then remained under the royal thumb until 1818.
Two years after its reunification with the United States, Maine became liberated from Massachusetts for the first time since 1653 and began to breathe into its own unique character.
For its part, Eastport rocketed as a center of shipping, shipbuilding, fishing, and sardine canning before the big decline of the 1900s set in.
Today, the tiny city’s locals remember a vibrant past and close-knit community, one that spanned the shorelines on both the American and Canadian sides of the watery border.
Is a renaissance on the horizon? There are signs for hope.
All of these strands infuse the holiday here.
Here’s a taste of last year’s pyrotechnics fired off from the fish pier downtown.Yes, fireworks can be visually composed, leading your eyes around the sky.
The national holiday also marks the opening of New England’s short summer season. After a cold, dark, long winter, Eastport’s small year-’round populace can actually come out into the open air for long times together. The ocean and lakes are finally warming, to the extent that they do, and that attracts vacationers to join in.
After months when only a stray New Hampshire or Massachusetts auto plate is seen around here, I’ve now seen those of every state but Alabama, Hawaii, and North Dakota (not all at the same time), some seeming rather exotic.
And the Fourth includes the city’s Old Home Week, with high school reunions and the return of many summer residents.
A lot happens over a four-day span. There’s a doll carriage and wagon parade. A torchlight parade. Car shows, bike races, water games, pet show, rubber ducky race, festive all-you-can-eat blueberry pancake breakfast, free outdoor movie, contests, live music, and a street dance, all with a small-town flavor.
A traditional visit by a large U.S. Navy vessel failed to materialize, a consequence of being on Ukraine-related alert. Three different ships had expressed interest in landing at the Breakwater before the turn in world events.
While fireworks were displayed off over the harbor on the Fourth, America’s Independence Day (the beautifully designed and executed big show fired from the town’s Fish Pier was followed by a joyously rowdy encore from a diner’s smaller private pier), the companion July 1 presentation for Canada Day, in honor of our neighbors in New Brunswick, was still a victim of Covid cutbacks. Some residents, though, could view shows happening on Deer Island across the water.
Seems ever so fitting to shoot the works twice, considering Eastport’s dual connections.
Yeah, yeah, I know the concerns about holding animals in captivity. But where else are kids going to learn about exotic fellow creatures? TV? They can’t smell them there. The circus? Few of us even live on farms anymore, and those dogs I see walked up and down the street are hardly exemplary of the animal kingdom. Frankly, they’re more spoiled than most children.
But I digress. Out of view, the best zoos are also places of serious research and attempts to keep gene pools alive.
Here are some of the best in North America:
San Diego. It pioneered the open-air, cageless exhibits, for one thing, and is in a beautiful park, for another. So I’ve heard.
St. Louis. More than 600 species on 90 acres, and you can get around via a mini-railroad.
Omaha. Some of us remember it from a television series.
Cincinnati. Includes a botanical garden, and for years it was also home to the summer opera, the nation’s second-oldest. Now that was an interesting mix.
Bronx. It was the first with a zoo animal hospital and full-time veterinarian staff.
Toronto. Features seven distinct zoogeographic regions – animals and relevant plants and climate displayed together.
Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. One of the most diverse, and admission is free.
Los Angeles. Founded in 1966, it’s one of the newer zoos in America and has zoomed in status.
Columbus. Includes a notable aquarium, a manatee rescue and rehabilitation program, and Polar Frontier.
Philadelphia. Also noted for its success with hard-to-breed-in-captivity species.
Honorable mentions to Miami, Fort Worth, Seattle, Brookfield and Lincoln Park in Chicago, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, Houston, and Denver.
Devastating downtown fires were a big hazard for 19th century American cities, large and small, from New York, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis down to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Portland and Bangor, Maine, closer to home. (For the record, San Francisco actually suffered more from the fires than from the 1908 earthquake just before them.) It’s a long list, actually, and some center cities were leveled by flames and intense heat more than once.
Eastport was one of them, with great fires in 1839, 1864, and 1886 – the last one barely missing our house but leaving the rafters spookily charred.
That blaze, in October, started in one of the sardine factories on the waterfront and spread quickly, consuming almost every building along the harbor.
An antique store window is fun to browse, even when the shop’s closed.
Remarkably, the city rebounded quickly, with most of the Water Street buildings completed and reopened within the next year or two – many of them designed by the same architect and resulting in a visual unity for the five-block stretch.
Today the entire downtown district is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Still, here’s what we have. Put another way, every city needs a center, and a shopping mall just ain’t the answer.
The big challenge, of course, is finding the right mix of business and residence to keep it vibrant. Eastport’s off-season populace falls short of what’s needed but just may be changing in the aftermath of Covid-19.We have art galleries, thank you.
A downtown is more than a place to shop, for one thing, though that helps. It should be pedestrian friendly, with places to stop and sit and meet folks and chat or maybe just stroll afterhours. Cafes, restaurants, and pubs help, too. A post office and banks as well. Throw in a few theaters, nightspots, galleries, churches. Then offices, hair stylists and barbers, upstairs residences, even a hotel or more.
A tucked-in amphitheater overlooking the harbor actually has concerts in the summer. It also provides one more place to simply sit and relax.The street’s not one-way but should be, if we could only conveniently connect it as an easy round-trip..
Tell us something that makes your community special. Where would you take us if we visit?
As a friend tells it, she and a cousin were visiting a carnival in another town and, on a whim, decided to have a palm reading done at a fortuneteller’s booth.
Once they were under way, the psychic looked puzzled. “I have to ask,” she said, hesitantly. “Are you a prostitute?”
Initial shock passing, came the reply, “No, why?”
“Because I see you surrounded by men.”
Ahh! Not so off the mark after all.
“I had to tell her I work at the pier and am surrounded by longshoremen.”
Living in New England, I’ve gained a fondness for lighthouses, an appreciation that has been heightened by my relocation to Way DownEast Maine. This state alone has more than 60 still in working order.
My research regarding the towers and their beams has, however, had me admitting that the bulk of the world’s most glorious examples are to be found on the rugged Atlantic coastline of France. Some of them resemble small castles, and many are built in grand style, no expense spared.
The English, in contrast, appear stuffy and uninspired. (Sorry about the pun there.)
What I wasn’t expecting was the discovery that Ireland also has some stunning examples.
If I ever get to the Emerald Isle, they’ll be high on my list of sites to visit.
Jnana's Red Barn 