By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Jared McKenna
From the Fall 2023 issue of Maine Homes by Down East
In a city whose every square inch seems to have been explored and reexplored over the years, the forts that dot Portland’s Casco Bay islands are relatively untrampled relics. But now, with the opening of a glamping and event outpost at House Island’s Fort Scammel, visitors can sleep among the ruins, dine in a subterranean bastion illuminated with LED lanterns, and gather in a military mess tent on a parade, the same berm-sheltered clearing soldiers ran drills on when Fort Scammel protected Portland Harbor from the War of 1812 through the Civil War. “The intent was to have a business that can get people out here so that we can preserve and celebrate this place,” says Stefan Scarks, a mechanical engineer who purchased House Island with his father, developer Michael Scarks, in 2014. Afterward, they sold the northern, groomed half of the island and its historic homes, retaining the overgrown southern end with 40,000 square feet of forts erected between 1808 and 1876. In 2021, Fortland opened for summer bookings.
Owner Stefan Scarks angled Fortland’s platform tents and yurts — equipped with Pendleton blankets and loungers from Vassalboro’s Maine Adirondack Chairs — to frame the ocean and snippets of Fort Scammel, so the view “is intentionally set into the place.”
Though it’s just a 10-minute ride from South Portland’s Bug Light Park on a retired Navy utility boat operated by affiliate tour company SeaPortland, Fortland feels worlds away. The landscape, save some clearing of invasive plants, remains untouched; the granite forts, protected by the terrain, largely preserved. Designed to minimize impact on its historic sites and ecology, the 16-acre property encompasses three solar-powered yurts, built by Scarks and former business partner Travis Bullard on granite cannon foundations, four solar-powered platform tents on secluded waterfront sites connected by the fort networks’ existing tunnels and trails, solar showers, and composting toilets. The décor is spare, in intentional deference to the setting, with simple wood and rattan furniture and cedar flooring complementing the structures’ fir framing. Textiles in sedate gray and blue geometric patterns add subtle verve to the spa-like rooms’ abundant whites. “I get a lot from this place in terms of body and soul,” says Scarks, who spends most in-season weekends here with his wife, Fortland co-manager, Katrina, and their two children. “My son and daughter are really in their element here. I try to remind them that they are animals first and foremost, and the draw to be outside and live a bit more primitively is not a bad one.”
From $299/night, May-Oct. 207-200-1267.
