Recognize this island plantation?
Artists and writers such as Elizabeth Ogilvie have flocked to this summer island haven.
This is the time of year when life returns to this postcard-pretty island — the birds, the rugosa, the summer people. The 1930 census showed sixty-seven residents lived on this, the most remote inhabited island on the East Coast (according to the proud locals), more than twenty miles from the main. Then the school closed just before World War II, the post office shut its doors in the sixties, and regular ferry service petered out thereafter. Since then, the place has been a summer haven for about twenty families, split evenly between vacationers and lobstermen. This island has, at times, been called by other names: Bennett, Racketash, and — ahem — Ragged Ass. And it’s attracted its share of artists and writers, among them the novelist Elizabeth Ogilvie. Recently it was the setting of a college soap opera miniseries that aired on soapnet.com. If you can I.D. this pleasant plantation, send us a comment here, drop us a note at PO Box 679, Camden, ME 04843, or whip us an e-mail at editorial@downeast.com.
Comments may be edited for spelling. Profanity is discouraged.
Reader Comments:
Is it Matinicus Island?
This is Creehaven. The person who introduced us to Maine spent her youth on the island.
Stephen Dyson
Williamsville, NY
That beautiful island is Criehaven, thanks to my husband (who is from Matinicus) I was introduced the the islands in 1963. We stay on Matinicus several times a year (July - November) thanks to relatives and many a summer day has been spent on Matinicus Southern Sandy Beach looking across at Criehaven. Criehaven has come a long way in the past decade. Thanks for the beautiful pictures and comments.
On page R22 - the "Moving to Maine" section of the same publication - Matinicus Island is described as "....about twenty miles offshore from Rockland, is Maine’s most remote inhabited island, with a year-round population of about fifty.”
I'd have to say it's Matinicus, even though I've never been there.....
C.Herman
Bel Air, MD
This Island I believe is Criehaven, or better known as Ragged Island. It is a great lobster fishing place and is beyond words for serene and peaceful. Having grown up in New Hampshire and always vacationed in Maine...my heart still is in New England!