In 1929, the 31-year-old son of a world-famous inventor purchased his first plot of land on this island, where he’d spent many happy summers since childhood. Over the next two decades, he acquired many more acres here but never built on them, instead preserving the island’s dramatic headlands and quiet woods from becoming building lots, eventually donating his parcels to the land trust he cofounded in 1954. Because of that trust — one of the first established on the East Coast — more than two-thirds of the island is permanently conserved. Some 12 miles of trail wind through spruce and balsam-fir forest and across rocky beaches and some of Maine’s tallest coastal cliffs. A trail on the island’s south end leads visitors to the rusted remains of a nearly 80-year-old shipwreck. It’s one of the island’s more photographed sites, as is the cottage overlooking it, owned over the years by two of the most prominent of the many artists the island famously attracts — not least because of those lovingly preserved wildlands.
This month’s Where in Maine is sponsored by
If you can name this island and the tug wrecked on its southern shore, submit your answer below. We’ll feature our favorite letter in an upcoming issue — and send the winner a Down East wall calendar.
