Can you name this charming town with expansive views?
By the guest editor of our April 2017 issue, Martha Stewart
In this serene Maine town of fewer than 1,500 residents — where the clock on my phone jumps ahead an hour, picking up a New Brunswick signal — I love the sight of the lighthouse across the narrows. The octagonal tower stands atop a grassy hillock on a vacation island once beloved by a silver-tongued U.S. president and now home to a beautiful international park. In the mid-1800s, the town bustled with fishing business: some 70 smokehouses produced half a million boxes of smoked herring a year. Nowadays, it bustles with travelers, many of whom come to see another lighthouse, this one famously adorned in candy-cane stripes, on the U.S.’s easternmost outcropping. I like to day-trip here by boat, and as an avid rambler, I enjoy the town’s 93 or 97 miles of unspoiled coastline (the mileage depends on whom you ask). On your next trip, be sure to inquire about the community’s big-fish story: Volunteers, armed with clam rakes, helped students and faculty from UMaine Machias and College of the Atlantic excavate the skeleton of a 54-foot finback whale that beached and was buried in 1994. The bones will be cleaned and reassembled and then displayed locally as a tribute to the magnificent creatures of these coastal waters. I can’t wait to see the result!