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Eastport Maine
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July 23, 2021
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Eastport park formed through citizen dedication
by Lora Whelan

 

     When Perry resident Carol Bryan overhears someone mentioning how they've just discovered this wonderful place called Shackford Head State Park in Eastport, she feels a warm glow of happiness. Over the past century the rugged peninsula had been threatened with significant change from proposals such as an industrial oil refinery or as a development of vacation "cottages."
     While the peninsula in Eastport proper had been a place where people went for picnics and scrambles through the brush, it did not become a member of the state park system until 1989. Bryan was a founding member of the Eastport Land Trust (ELT), formed in 1987, and was part of a core of volunteers who recognized and acted to reduce the impact of development pressures on the island city. Shackford Head State Park was the culmination of two years of intense effort on the land trust's part to ensure that the peninsula would not be sold by its owner, the Pittston Company, for industrial or other development uses.
     "So much of it had to do with Pittston," says Greg Biss, another founding member of ELT. There was an early 20th century development plan for vacation "cottages" that came to naught, but the Pittston company's purchase in the 1970s of much of the peninsula for a proposed oil refinery, which roiled up the community for years, brought home the fragility of what had been taken for granted: public access to its secluded coves, pebble beaches, granite cliffs above natural caves and arches, with wooded areas leading to horizontal stands of juniper, cranberry and blueberry.
     The 1988 application to the Land For Maine's Future (LMF) Board for the formation of the state park states, "Shackford Head possesses a rare opportunity to create, on Cobscook Bay and within the City of Eastport, a day use recreational and educational area, one with significant coastal access, as a potential link in a chain of existing state and town parks from West Quoddy Head to Passamaquoddy Bay, as well as complement the existing Canadian park system in the immediate area." It adds that the peninsula's significance "lies primarily in its opportunity to provide public water access to a large stretch of undisturbed coastline in Cobscook Bay and especially on Moose Island, an island with very little city owned water frontage for the public." In addition its vista "of international significance is unsurpassed in the Cobscook Bay area."
     The ELT board members knew that there was a window of opportunity to act. "Pittston was having labor problems with its coal companies down south, so they wanted to sell," Bryan remembers. At the same time, the Land For Maine's Future Program had just formed and was reviewing applications for bond funded land acquisitions to preserve for all Mainers to enjoy.
     Ken Schiano and Paula Stewart Beall of QA13 Architects lived in Eastport at the time and were members of the land trust. He remembers how he and Beall created four presentation boards for the application. Photographer and artist Leslie Bowman, six months pregnant at the time, went up in an airplane to take aerial photos for the boards. He notes that Mark DeVoto, a professor of music at Tufts University and part time resident of Eastport, cataloged the extensive flora, including Indian pipe, lady's slippers and more. Biss, a diver, took underwater photographs. It was a group effort with the community as a whole behind the idea. "There was a small portion of Eastport that grumbled about it, but they got on board quickly," Biss remembers.
     "We did a town survey," explains Bryan. "People stepped forward; there were piles of responses."
     "There were a lot of people interested in the Shackford Head project who didn't have an interest in land trusts," Biss adds. "There was that history of informal use."
     It was one of the first Land for Maine's Future projects, remembers Lissa Widoff. "Community interest was high." Widoff was with the program in its early days and remembers the Shackford Head project well. "When it happened, some of the proposals of the past, like the oil refinery, the developments, were recent enough" to galvanize many people to want to save it. As someone who has a big picture of land development and conservation in the state, she points to the current real estate boom and stresses her appreciation for how well the Land for Maine's Future program has worked for Mainers. "The program had an opportunity to look at larger properties." And with the current development pressures taking place in Maine that echo some of what took place in the 1980s, she notes that preserving and conserving land in the past allow for the continuance of enriching the understanding of the properties, not just geological and biological, but cultural, such as the Wabanaki heritage tied to the land for thousands of years.
     As for why the peninsula became a state park rather than a land trust property, Widoff explains that the very first iteration of the LMF bonding, created by the legislature, stipulated that a state agency had to step in to shepherd and take on ownership of the property. "The rules changed later that lands could be owned by land trusts," she adds. "It's a beautiful property," she says, and she laments that she hasn't had an opportunity to come Downeast for a visit in many years.
     Bryan and Biss note that ELT worked on identifying a number of Eastport public water access points in the city and lands of traditional value; was heavily involved in the Coastal Cleanup program; and for a number of years sponsored a scholarship to send students to the Tanglewood 4 H Camp. Shackford Head State Park is the jewel in the crown of their work, but they are modest and quick to note that it took the community's enthusiasm and support for the project to successfully apply to the LMF.
     "I was surprised and elated," says Biss of when they heard the news that the state had approved the Shackford Head purchase. "I thought we had done our due diligence and that our proposal was good." Bryan adds, "I remember being extremely happy," at the news. The 81-acre property was bought from Pittston for $500,000 and $60,000 for an abutting eight acres from Moose Island Enterprises. The properties had been appraised at $630,000 and $73,000 respectively. Bryan smiles as she remembers that when the property became an official state park there was no parking lot. "The state didn't think there would be much use." That opinion quickly changed, and a year later a parking lot was added.

A brief history of the park
     A brief history of Shackford Head State Park can be found at the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands' website page on the site, but the behind-the-scenes work of the Eastport Land Trust and community involvement is but a passing note, and there is no mention of the Passamaquoddy and their long relationship with the land. Bryan hopes to change that in the future and is thinking about how to involve tribal members in a conversation about their traditional use of the land and how a new plaque might reflect that history.
     Shackford Head is named for one of the city's earliest settlers, Capt. John Shackford - a Revolutionary War soldier who arrived with his family about 1783. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he spent most of his 87 years based in Eastport. Capt. Shackford owned the headland and used Broad Cove as his ship's anchorage. During the early 1900s, five ships that had served in the Civil War were burned for salvage at Cony Beach on Shackford Head. In 2003 memorial plaques researched by Eastport historian Wayne Wilcox were placed on the site to provide more details about this chapter in the headland's history.
     In the 1970s, Shackford Head was the site of a proposed oil refinery that the Pittston Company sought to construct -- a plan that met with strong opposition due to Cobscook Bay's navigational hazards and exceptional wildlife values. When the property came up for sale in 1988, the Eastport Land Trust sought assistance from the state's LMF program to keep the land wild for the public to enjoy. The LMF program helped fund its acquisition in 1989, and the Maine Department of Conservation now owns and manages the land.

 

 

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