SEARSPORT, Maine — The hustle and bustle of Maine during its summer tourism season is obvious along Route 1, the busy highway that carries visitors through this coastal town, often en route to Mount Desert Island, the Blue Hill Peninsula or points farther up the coast.
For locals in the know, though, it’s possible to turn off Route 1 and drive about 2 miles south to find an easy hideaway from all that traffic, on the walking trails and beaches of secluded Sears Island.
“You don’t have to pay anything,” Rolf Olsen, a Searsport resident who often visits the island, said during a recent tour. “It’s free and open to the public, and you can spend several hours here. It’s healthful. It’s invigorating. It’s mind-clearing to walk through the forest and spend time in nature, listening to the sounds, looking at the colors.”
It’s that pristine quality that has endeared Sears Island to local residents for years. It’s also what has put the state-owned island at the center of some of Maine’s most heated development disputes of the past few decades.
Projects ranging from a cargo port to a nuclear plant have been proposed there in the past, given the island’s proximity to deep water and a rail line that would help to ship things to and from there. But all those proposals have fallen, often in the face of fierce opposition from local activists and environmental groups. Now Sears Island is at the center of another debate, as state officials pursue the construction of a port facility for Maine’s future offshore wind industry.
Despite the green energy that could eventually be generated from that project, though, some of the same conservation-minded groups and citizens oppose the proposal.
They are instead pushing for the wind port to be located on Mack Point, a privately run shipping port just across the bay on the mainland. They have formed an unusual alliance with tribes, Republicans and Democrats who are also wary of the plan to develop a section of Sears Island — though they have yet to meaningfully slow its progress through the initial development stages.
“People feel an ownership for the island, and environmentalists and others have appreciated this island for decades, really, and have struggled and fought to protect it,” said Olsen, who is vice president of the group Friends of Sears Island.
So what is it about Sears Island that has inspired such a devoted following?
Its visitors frequently highlight the rarity of a mostly undeveloped East Coast island being reachable by car, making it an accessible way for people to experience the wilds of Maine’s shore. It has beaches, walking trails, water views and many different kinds of wildlife, especially birds — though this time of year, pesky insects as well.
“You always feel that there’s a space that you can be quiet in, you can meditate in, you can take walks in, you can listen to the waves crash on the shore, you can listen to the birds,” said Susan White, president of the Friends of Sears Island, who loves to swim there. “That’s what’s special about it. It feels like a nature sanctuary, and yet you can drive there by car. It feels like a real island, but you can get there much more easily than having to access it by boat.”
Donna Gold and Bill Carpenter, a married couple from Stockton Springs, have started an initiative to collect other people’s stories about Sears Island. They enjoy walking on the island’s trails, and they have their own favorite elements as well.
For Gold, it’s the thrushes, warblers and other birds that can be seen and heard there. For Carpenter, it’s the fact that Sears Island is rougher around the edges than some of the coast’s other, more famous protected lands.
“It’s the people’s island,” he said. “It has a sense of freedom on that island that takes me back to my own boyhood. It’s different from going to Acadia National Park or Moose Point State Park or something like that, where nature is highly organized for the visitor.”
Jane Flint, a resident of Searsport for 25 years, said that the island “has been a lifesaver” during her career in the high-stress field of nursing, as it’s a good spot to clear her head.
Among her favorite experiences have been watching frogs and salamanders lay their eggs in the vernal pools that develop on the island in spring, and the larger species — including moose, fox and turkey — that visit during certain times of year.
“There’s so much out there,” she said.
The natural resources on Sears Island have remained mostly untouched since it was first discovered by the region’s original Penobscot residents, who called it Wassumkeag.
However, there has been development of the island, including the addition of a causeway from the mainland, a cell tower and two roads, along with a rock jetty that has resulted in the formation of a sand dune. While state laws restrict tampering with sand dunes, lawmakers passed a controversial exemption last year for that one to be removed.
State officials and other proponents of developing Sears Island for the wind port have made several arguments for why it’s a better location than privately owned Mack Point, including that the latter would require leasing fees and more dredging. (The owner of Mack Point, Sprague Energy, disputes that it would require much dredging.)
But opponents of the state’s plan argue that removing trees and other natural resources from Sears Island would undermine the broader objectives of the wind port, which is meant to help Maine reduce its overall carbon footprint.
“We think that if the state wants a renewable energy future or clean energy future, they need to leave intact forests and wetlands in place, because they have been determined to be actually more important for climate resilience,” Searsport resident Chris Bridges told the Bangor Daily News in April.
