Although Swan Island is undeveloped and protected as a wildlife refuge, its 300-year-old history is under attack.

Story by Sally LaMotte Crane / Aug. 15, 2003

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The views on Swan Island, Maine, are the same as they have been for centuries. (Sally LaMotte Crane)

Although the 19th-century agrarian village of Swan Island is only 16 miles from Maine's state capitol dome, the swift-flowing Kennebec River has protected the four-mile-long island and its village like a moat, preserving it in time.

Settled more than 300 years ago but abandoned in the 1940s, Swan Island is listed as a historic district in the National Register, harboring 34 historic sites like walls and foundations. Yet nature threatens the island's six remaining houses, including a 1763 colonial saltbox and a c. 1800 Federal structure.

"The ongoing deterioration of the historic structures is of great concern," says Amy Cole Ives, architectural historian for the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. "The threat to these buildings is common to many of Maine's cultural resources—a lack of funding to prevent the snowballing effects of deferred maintenance."

The buildings on the island, which the state owns and manages as a wildlife sanctuary, have deteriorated so significantly that in 2001, Maine Preservation placed Swan Island on its Most Endangered Historic Properties list. "This is a wholly unique historic district unlike any other in Maine, and it is essential that it be preserved and interpreted correctly for new generations," says Roxanne Eflin, executive director of the nonprofit.

The Tubbs-Reed House, c. 1800, one of the island's six remaining houses (Sally LaMotte Crane)

Swan Island's name is likely short for "Swango," the Abenaki Indian name for "Island of Eagles." Captain John Smith and the Kennebec Indians met here in 1614. In 1775, Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold, en route to a futile mission to capture Quebec, reportedly stayed at the impressive Gardiner-Dumaresq house, which still stands and is presumed to be Maine's first summer home. By the late 1800s, Swan Island was home to more than 90 residents, who earned a living by farming, fishing, lumbering, shipbuilding, brick manufacturing, and ice making.

When the Great Depression descended, however, the island that some 25 families once populated had become a dying community. The decline of various industries, coupled with property tax burdens, spurred a slow exodus. Regular ferry service to Swan Island ended in 1936, and by the 1940s, the state began purchasing island property for a wildlife management preserve, often for back taxes. The state purchased the last homestead in 1952. Today, roughly 4,000 visitors, including small numbers of overnight campers, enjoy its solitude each year.

As a wildlife sanctuary, Swan Island is under the oversight of Maine's Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IF & W). Three staff members tend to the island: a wildlife biologist and two seasonal conservation aides. (In June of this year, state budget cuts trimmed one maintenance staff position.) Since 1994, no staff members have lived on the island year round. Aside from the state's efforts to stabilize the two oldest houses in the 1960s and the 1980s, the department has had no specific funding to preserve Swan Island's buildings.

Charles "Rusty" Dyke, wildlife biologist and the manager of Swan Island, says that wildlife management, not cultural preservation, is the principal mandate of his department and its scientific staff. "Historic restoration and historic preservation of the buildings really start to fall way outside of the mandate of the IF & W and, frankly, our abilities to address those sorts of things," Dyke says.

The group that consults with the IF & W on the island's cultural affairs is the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, which wrote the National Register nomination for Swan Island and which helped develop a master plan for the state's management of Swan Island published three years ago. Yet the commission, too, suffered budget casualties in the spring of 2003 that partially impacted Swan Island and this year could not fund a grant for reports on the island's two most prominent houses.

Fortunately, since 1998, two nonprofit organizations have entered into partnership agreements with the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Department, helping to raise money and restore and stabilize several of the island's structures. "It's worked out really well. It required thinking outside the box in terms of management," Dyke says. "It evolved slowly, by design, so that we could both feel our way through it."

The Swan Island Project brings students to the island to learn. (Sally LaMotte Crane)

On a crisp June morning, an excited group of sixth-grade students from the Middle School of nearby Richmond, Maine climbed aboard a transport boat to Swan Island for a field trip. Six years ago, their principal, Douglas Read, wondered why his students were viewing a filmstrip on nature when a wildlife preserve was directly across the river. He and two other educators formed the Swan Island Project, Inc., to allow students access to the island. Under the partnership agreement with the state, the teachers have helped restore and stabilize the c. 1860 Lilly-Wade House in exchange for permission to use it as a base of educational operations on the island. Read describes the house as having been in "dire straits," badly rotting and full of animal waste. Over several summers and weekend, they re-roofed the building and installed new sills and brickwork around the foundation. "We are about 90 percent complete on restoring the exterior, but it's going to be at least three more years to restore the interior," Read says.

Each year, the Swan Island Project brings more than 400 students to the island to study science and art as well as the environment and the island's cultural history. Physical-education classes run on the unpaved road. In 1998, the Richmond Middle School won a Maine Exemplary Science Award for their Swan Island Project.

Last year, a second organization, Friends of Swan Island, Inc., and volunteers helped stabilize the c. 1850 Maxwell-Tarr House, assisted by a $1,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Northeast Office and a $500 grant from Maine Preservation. Bruce Trembly, the group's president, wants to find specific uses for all six remaining buildings. Among them, he says, "The Gardiner-Dumaresq house could be a museum, the Reed house could be a visitor reception center, and the Robinson house might be used as an artists' retreat."

All of the people involved with Swan Island agree that the task of preserving and transforming these dwellings remains daunting both financially and in terms of necessary labor. "The bottom line is that these buildings are going to require a huge amount of resources, way beyond what is available in public money," says Swan Island Manager Rusty Dyke. "It's going to take significant energy and, in my view, partnership with the private sector to make that happen."

For visitor information, call (207) 547-5322 from May through Labor Day.

Sally LaMotte Crane is a freelance writer living in Wiscasset, Maine.

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