Winter, 2024

NEWSLETTER

This edition marks the fourth and final installment of our Perspectives in Conservation. To date we have been presented with examples of conservation as a means to create "forever farmland", to preserve established (dog-friendly) trail systems, and to protect critical wildlife habitat. The properties in each of these cases could have been sold for private development, fetching a hefty price, but conserving the land (and working with Blue Hill Heritage Trust) has translated into green spaces, benefiting everyone in perpetuity.

Today we will look at conservation from the perspective of family; of stories passed down from one generation to the next, of memories made, and the hopes for many more to come. Like the others, this story could have ended before it even got started with a high priced sale. Instead Michael Rossney (co-owner of El El Frijoles with wife Michele) shares some of the choices that come with an extended family inheriting the "perfect [100+ year old] summer retreat."

Off of Route 175 in Sargentville, down Ferry Landing Rd, sits a 15.3 acre parcel of land that includes 400'+ of shoreline. Edgehill, where to the west you can see the Deer Isle-Stonington Bridge. To the east, islands on the horizon. It's here that Blue Hill Heritage Trust plans to build a boardwalk in 2025 that will make accessing the shoreline easier for people with mobility issues.

The planning of this project has been months in the making, and has included working with government agencies, weather/storm delays, and postponing work to accommodating a nest pair of osprey. All this pales in comparison to the amount of time, years in fact, that a local family- with over 100 years and several generations of memories at Edgehill- took to come to their decision to ultimately work with BHHT.

The following is Michael Rossney's account of his family's love of Edgehill, and the choices they made to keep the family home, while preserving the area's character for the greater community. Blue Hill Heritage Trust is honored to work with individual land owners in this way, in addition to foundations and community donors, without whom conserving land, water, and wildlife habitat on the greater Blue Hill Peninsula would not be possible.

In 1905, Horace Eaton was on a mission. He’d traveled to mid-coast Maine to find the perfect summer retreat for his new wife and what hopefully would be their big family. In a letter home to his beloved, he lamented the lack of suitable locations along the coast for such an endeavor. He found Rockland and Camden “too industrial”, crowded and full of stink and bustling with commercial activity. Not a place for a family to while away the summer. He’d heard tales about Rusticators finding suitable summer havens way up the coast, towards Bar Harbor, and while it seemed hopelessly remote, there was a steamship that called on several wharves along the coast.

When he got off the ship at Sargentville, and walked up the hill into the village, he found what had been a small hotel being run as a boarding house. It was a bit ramshackled, but seemed to have good bones, there was nice mill pond out back, and a lovely view down to Eggemoggin Reach. He wrote his bride, full of enthusiasm, and told her heʼd finally found “the” place for them. It was called Edgehill.

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