People in Bar Harbor are in the grip of a fundamental tension. The downtown and waterfront are swarmed by visitors arriving by land and cruise ship every year. Crowds spill into Acadia National Park, where visitation was up 17 percent year-to-date by the end of August, making for the third record-setter in a row, and putting the park on track…

Maine’s 5,400-mile coastline is one of its most valuable assets. It creates a living for fishermen, a powerful draw for tourists and a quality of life that is possible in…

E.B. White was a writer’s writer. He wrote poetry, columns for magazines like The New Yorker and Harper’s—essays, really, and in a style that remains in vogue 70 years later—and,…

Ask Mainers about their favorite season, and most would probably say it’s autumn. One of the reasons for that choice, some might say, is that most of the tourists have…

  Reflections is a monthly column written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in remote coastal communities through the Island Institute,…

A land map of the United States reveals a patchwork of federally protected areas, while a map of the Atlantic Ocean, until recently, had no protected areas. That changed in…

In March of 1993, the U.S. East Coast experienced what has been called the Storm of the Century. This category 5 storm created havoc with high winds and coastal flooding,…

As Maine’s coastline changes hands, access to the shore becomes more contentious and litigious. Access is controversial, and this is especially true on islands. What happens when legal claims clash…

Will the small community general store go the way of the village blacksmith? Time will tell, but an analysis of the forces at work on the Maine coast offers a…

Coleman Brice, an information technology consultant in New Jersey, visited a friend in Eastport a dozen or so years ago. “I was blown away by the intellectual climate, the creative…