Journey Through Time
Welcome to the Desert of Maine. We’ve got lots to show you and many stories to tell about the Desert’s history. By the time we’re done, you’ll have traveled through time from the Ice Age to the Civil War to Prohibition era and up through the present day. Along the way, we’ll talk about glaciers, different plant and animal species, aquifers, but we’ll also tell some stories about the human beings who inhabited this place over the last 13,000 years—from native people to early farmers to business-minded folks who saw the potential for a tourist attraction, some of whom might have taken things a little too far, turning this place into a bit of a circus. I can’t wait to show you the dunes, which are quite spectacular. But before we head out there, I want to tell you a little bit about this old barn right here. Follow me.
Historic Barn: Last Remnant of the Tuttle Farm
After the ice age, after the Wabanaki discovered this area, after Maine was colonized and Freeport was founded, after all of that history... this land was a working, fertile farm owned by the Tuttle family. This would have been from 1821 until the 1890s. They’re the ones who originally built a barn on this property.Take a look at the beams, which are the long pieces of wood supporting the structure. The oldest ones come from the 1700s and the trees they were cut from date back to the 1500s! That’s around the time that Europeans first started exploring the Americas. If you look closely, you’ll see that—amazingly—no nails were used to tie the joints together! They use what’s called a “mortise and tenon” construction. Basically it’s a system of notches that fit together like pieces of a 3-D jigsaw puzzle.As you can see, it makes for an extremely sturdy structure. Even though it’s a better story to say this is a 300-year-old barn, the truth is, it was built in the 19th century. It’s larger and has a bigger entrance area than what they would have built a century before. So, in short, the barn we’re in was cobbled together from a few different barns. The Tuttles built the first one using recycled beams and since then it’s been refurbished and expanded and that continues to this day. In the fall, this barn will become a state-of-the art concert venue while preserving its beautiful historical details.The farm family patriarch, John Tuttle, was ambitious and, I think it’s fair to say, he could be a little hot-headed. One of the Tuttle descendants once wrote of him: “...Becoming angered at something at a town meeting in the neighboring town of Pownal, John vowed he would never attend another and forthwith moved his house and barn over the townline into Freeport.” The “something” he was angry about was likely the fact that Pownal had been refusing to build a road to the Tuttle property for decades. So he decided to move to a town that might actually respond to his concerns. Talk about “taking your ball and going home!” For John to move his homestead, it took a team of 24 oxen to do the job. Just imagine that visual for a moment—all those animals pulling a HOUSE and a BARN up the poorly made road and then plopping them both down right here on this spot! If we were shooting a John Tuttle biopic, this little story would make for an epic sequence in our film. Later in the tour, we will show you where the house and barn originally stood.Ok, let’s walk up the stairs and towards the dunes…
Big House, Little House, Backhouse Barn
John and his wife, Abigail Tuttle, both in their 60s, brought along sons Peter and James and their wives Eleanor and Elizabeth, who were themselves sisters. You heard that right. Two brothers from one family married two sisters from another. It must have been cozy in that house! And as nice as Abigail is said to have been, I bet it wasn’t easy for Eleanor and Elizabeth to be living that close to their mother-in-law! Peter Tuttle’s son, John Alvah, remembered the family home as “something in the manner of a communal house,” which is a polite way of saying no one ever had any privacy unless they were taking their turn in the outhouse. To accommodate this sizable Tuttle brood, the family did what many New England farmers did around that same time—they pushed two houses together and connected them to two barns. As you can see, this barn is all that remains of the Tuttles’ original structures. We’ll tell you why at the next stop. This configuration was so common that it inspired a children’s verse a couple hundred years ago. It was one of those verses that girls sing about their future marriage prospects. Can’t you just hear their voices chanting?Now that you know the pattern, I think you’ll find that the rural New England landscape—Maine especially—is still full of this same farmhouse-and-barn structure. When driving down the back country roads, take a look around and I guarantee you’ll see it everywhere.
The Sand Farm
It must have been very exciting to come visit here in the early 1900s when the dunes were still in the process of forming. And people did visit! Locals called it the Sand Farm and one frequent visitor, Geraldine Coffin Brown, remembers coming with her family in the 1920s for picnics during a time when they could see only the tops of the young oak trees that had grown from acorns planted by the Tuttles.Now, a tree would die if you buried it all at once, but these trees were buried gradually as dunes formed. It’s impossible to know exactly how deep they’re buried without digging them up, but our geologist estimates it could be as much as 20 feet! Part of the fun of visiting the “Sand Farm” back in the day, was to look for changes in the landscape. A certain apple tree would be under sand, and months later, clear again. Geraldine and her family even came one Christmas morning on a horse-pulled sleigh, wrapped in bearskin rugs to keep warm. They cooked a simple meal over a small cook stove and opened their presents on that magical, barren landscape. As you might imagine, there were also lots of shenanigans that would happen here at night. Teenagers being teenagers, “getting into trouble” if you catch my drift. (Another sand pun! Sorry, they write themselves…) These Prohibition era hooligans were probably doing a bit of drinking and smoking and one night the Tuttles’ old houses and smaller barn caught fire and burned to the ground. It’s miraculous that the big barn is still standing! Anyway, the sand continued to blow—all the way into the nearby farms, under the doors and around the window. Just like the Tuttle’s homestead, all those old farms are gone now. Alright, anyone ready to see the dunes? Let’s head to the camel.
The Camel
So, we’ve already covered the Tuttles—sorry, not sorry, about these sand puns!—but there are a few other characters that were important to the Desert’s history. The first is Henry Goldrup, an enterprising young man and something of a visionary. Back in 1926, when it was still known to locals as The Sand Farm, the Desert caught Henry’s attention and he bought the land for $400. According to his sons, Henry was looking for a place to put his hotdog stand, but he must have known this location would be popular beyond just being a place to get a tasty snack. Henry is also the one who called this place The Desert of Maine, even though he was well aware that it received far too much precipitation to be a true desert. In a short time, The Desert of Maine attracted attention from travel writers and hordes of tourists from all over the north east.The next family to run the Desert were called the Polakewiches. They helped to further boost the Desert’s popularity with beautifully printed marketing materials and this funny camel sculpture here—we call her “Sandy.” They had a well-stocked gift shop including sand art by Mark’s daughter Marvis, and a wagon tour around the dunes pulled by Pedro the donkey… tours where they’d sometimes fudge the truth in the service of a good story. In probably the family’s craziest stunt, they dragged a couple of live camels onto the property, which wound up being a disaster. They never looked happy to be here and occasionally spit in visitor’s faces. After Mark died, his daughter Elaine took over operations and because she was cut from the same cloth, she took all of his marketing ideas and pushed them to the next level. And that went for bending some of the facts about the Desert. She had a famous phrase that she’d employ when instructing her tour guides, “Say whatever you want, just make it sincere!”Though we love Elaine’s flair—she was a natural performer—we’re striving for historical accuracy on our tour because we think the truth is actually the most interesting version of events! Let’s walk over here and I’ll show you the Spring House, a structure that was recently excavated from under 25ft of sand!
Spring House
Our friend Henry Goldrup, the original owner of the Desert of Maine, was the one to notice a natural spring that flowed from the sand near here. Considering the aquifer beneath the surface at the Desert of Maine, it is likely that more of these natural springs will emerge over the years. This one was discovered in 1936, but it was the Polakewiches who had the Spring House built in 1938.For starters, what is a Spring House? Between the 1890s and 1960s, it became a fad for people in the tourism industry to build small huts or shelters over natural springs. Poland Springs was the most famous in our neck of the woods, but there were hundreds around the country. Like peddlers of some of the other dubious “miracle cures” sweeping the nation at the time, these resorts sold their patrons on the healing properties of spring water, claiming to alleviate a host of illnesses including everything from , diabetes to asthma to malaria, “female troubles,” and—my favorite—”the dropsy” (that is, excess fluid in body cavities, if you’re keeping track).Mark was no doubt aware of this fad and wanted to capitalize on it himself, hoping visitors would associate the Desert with more upscale establishments like Poland Springs. And it worked to some extent! People would dress in their Sunday best and have their photo taken at the spring house and drink the waters from small paper cups. When the Desert had to close during WWII due to gas rationing, no employees were here to sweep out the sand which blew onto the structure from the prevailing northwesterly winds, so the Spring House became partially buried. Mark Palakowich died unexpectedly during the time the Desert was closed and he left the place to his wife and daughters, Fan, Elaine and Marvis. They were overwhelmed by the new responsibilities running the business, so they never cleared away the sand. Year after year more sand blew onto the structure and by 1962 the top of the roof was finally completely submerged in sand.In 2020, the current owners decided to dig up the Spring House and after consulting with Henry Goldrup’s son, Henry Goldrup Jr., who lives nearby, they found it under 25ft of sand! The spring is still active and the well and fountain are just as they were in the 1930s. The structure was too rotted out to be saved, so we will be completely rebuilding it this year using historic photos to guide us. Perhaps next year you can come here and get a drink of that magical spring water if you find yourself with a bad case of “the dropsy”.Now we’re going to walk towards those sheep you see in the distance...
Too Many Sheep!
We’re standing on what used to be the Tuttles’ pasturelands. If you look closely, you might still see some sheep out there…Even though this isn’t a true desert, it sure looks like one. So, how did it come to be? The short answer is: the dunes are a beautiful illustration of what happens when you try to raise 200 sheep on Maine farmland. Picture it—as far as the eye can see—dozens and dozens of little wooly grazers munching grass down to the dirt until there was nothing left to hold the topsoil in place. Then it started to blow away with the wind and wash away with the rain, until there was nothing left but the sand underneath the soil. You’re probably wondering why anyone would have done this to their land?To be fair to Peter and James Tuttle, farmers all over Maine during the same time period were resorting to similarly desperate schemes. Once railroads connected the Northeast with the fertile, plentiful farmlands of the midwest, it would have been impossible to compete on the price of certain crops. So when the Civil War rolled around, Peter and James sensed a new opportunity. They began raising sheep to produce wool for Union soldiers’ uniforms. And the meat from those sheep would have been processed into...close your eyes and try to imagine the taste of this delicacy… CANNED MUTTON! Mmmm… If you’re feeling hungry, you can buy a can at our Oasis Cafe.As the sheep did their damage, the Tuttles’ cash crops of potatoes and hay—which weren’t properly rotated—depleted the soil of all nutrients. Before long, the land had eroded and the Tuttles had to abandon their farm. It had become a Dust Bowl.But while the Tuttles got a little too overzealous with their sheep raising, like many other New England farmers at the time, they also had the misfortune of buying farmland which hid an enormous pile of sand. To understand where the sand came from, we need to go even further back in time, so now we’re going to head toward the 65-foot dune where I’ll give you a summary of what makes this place such a geological marvel...
65-Foot Dune
Picture this if you can: 27,000 years ago, what scientists call the “Laurentide Ice Sheet” covered the entire state of Maine. In fact, it stretched from Canada all the way to Cape Cod. But what exactly does an ice sheet have to do with a landscape like this? First, ice sheets are heavy! Think about how heavy a one-foot cube of ice would be. Do you think you’d be able to lift it? How about 3-feet? Well, this Ice Sheet was over a mile thick! It was so heavy it caused all of the landmass under it to sink. Glaciers move very slowly, but over thousands of years, they scrape and grind bedrock and boulders, creating different sizes of sediment. So it’s slowly pushing the land down, grinding anything in its path, advancing from Canada through Freeport—down, down, down. But as the temperature on the planet started to warm, it melted back and retreated north. Here in southern coastal Maine, the Ice Sheet was right up against the ocean as it was melting back, and it dumped sediment into the sea.The ocean waters sorted the sediment into different sizes. A blue-tinted sediment found beneath the dunes was of the finest sand and marine clay that was once sitting at the bottom of the sea floor. When the land finally rebounded and Freeport was no longer under water, these very fine sediments started blowing around and settled in a few different spots. So right now, you’re looking at Maine’s biggest deposit of fine glacial sand and clay from the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Pretty amazing, right?After dunes were formed around 13,000 years ago, they were gradually covered with topsoil and vegetation. And eventually a forest grew. The next bit of the tour is at the top of the 65-foot dune, if you’re up for the walk.If you look out towards those barns, you will see two forests. If Elaine Polackewich was my boss today, she might have me tell you that the forest on the right gave birth to the forest on the left when its seeds and cones fell and blew in that direction. But we now know that they’re both about the same age, and both were the result of reforestation after the original disturbance caused by overfarming. Can you think of a story of how those separate forests came to be? Maybe two trees had a fight and one wanted to get away from the other. Do you think that’s possible? Let’s go down and get a closer look at that forest on the left. We’ll look at some of the local plants that grow in this strange environment. And then I have a treat for you... I won’t tell you what it is, but it’s very old and you can sit in it!
Ecology at the Desert of Maine
One-hundred years ago, these woods were still “desert” sand. In fact, the sand covered six times the area that they do now. Before that they were farmland, but each of our families that lived here enjoyed a surrounding forest. The Tuttles logged their woods for the Maine Central Railroad during the time when the locomotives burned wood. And they would also have come to the woods to harvest different plants for food and medicinal purposes.Haircap moss is abundant here starting in April up until the first snows come. If any of the Tuttles had kidney stones, they would have harvested haircap moss and made it into a tea. It’s also good for inflammation. Starting in July, the farm children would have harvested blueberries for pies and jams, popping most into their mouths before they ever made their way into the bucket. But Abigail Tuttle would also have harvested the leaves of the blueberry plant to brew teas to strengthen the immune systems of anyone in the family who was under the weather. Blueberry leaf is also high in potassium and helps prevent heart disease. Goldenrod, which blooms in September, is like the ibuprofen of the forest. It reduces pain and inflammation. The same is true of willow bark, which Abigail would have harvested and made into a tea to cure headaches. When Henry Goldrup wasn’t giving tours of his favorite place, the Desert, you would probably have found him in his second favorite place, the woods. As a boy growing up in Freeport, Henry was kind of like Tom Sawyer in that he didn’t make it to school if the fish were biting--and the fish were often biting. But while he might not have learned all his school lessons, he was a great student of the forest and an expert in the ways of native wildlife. According to Henry’s sons, one summer he walked around with a posse of friends who followed him wherever he went. First in line was a duck, followed by a skunk and then a porcupine. Birds were so comfortable with Henry that they were known to alight on his fingers. He was also an expert hunter who frequently went on adventures with his friend, L.L. Bean. In fact, Henry and L.L. Bean are buried near each other in a cemetery a little over a mile from here.Elaine Polakewich was an animal lover herself and would go for long walks in the woods with her dogs. In her later years, she went on yearly hunting trips with the Freeport fire chief. She was very comfortable in nature, but I bet she would have tried to entertain guests like you with some tall tales about how these woods are haunted and cursed and will one day turn to sand. The woods of the Desert were well-traveled by the families that came before us.
1924 Ford Model T
Now here’s the surprise I promised you would see. This is a genuine Model-T Ford, the same type of car you would have found driving up the newly built Route 1 on your way up to the Desert in the 1920s and 30s. As this place started to get more popular, you would have seen cars lining Desert Road all the way up to the entrance. Certainly the Polakewiches were responsible for the surge in popularity during the time that they ran the Desert, but, to remind you, the man we have to thank for conceiving of this place as a tourist attraction in the first place is Henry Goldrup.A master of the forest, Henry was also a student of human behavior. He took a gamble that he could entice people to come to the Desert if the conditions were ripe, and he turned out to be right! As we mentioned earlier, he first conceived this place as a unique location for selling hotdogs. He also sold homemade ice-cream and popcorn, and he came up with the ingenious and sometimes infuriating idea of wiring a metal placard that read “Desert of Maine” to the visitors’ cars that waited for them in the parking lot. Because he was such an inveterate naturalist (and quite the talker), he captivated visitors with tours that could go on for hours. Don’t worry, we promise not to do the same. In fact, we’ve got just 2 more stops and then we’ll head back to the barn.Feel free to take a picture in the car, just be careful. She’s nearly a hundred years old!
Vernal Pool
A vernal pool is a seasonal pool of water that provides habitat for distinctive plants and animals. They are called “vernal” (meaning of or relating to spring) because they are often at the highest depth during the spring months. Because they usually lack fish, they allow for the safe development of amphibian and insect species, such as spotted salamanders, wood frogs, peeper frogs and fairy shrimp. Vernal pools are good for the forest for a few different reasons. First, they’re the forests’ food source. It works like this: small bugs eat the fallen leaves, frogs and salamanders eat the bugs, turtles and snakes eat the frogs, birds eat the snakes, foxes eat the birds, eagles eat the foxes, and so on! Without vernal pools, we would have forests full of old leaves and many animals would starve. Secondly, between the time the vernal pool floods in the spring and evaporates in the summer months, the flowers of a variety of robust native species attract pollinators and influence seed distribution patterns. Vernal pools favor native species because non-natives can’t handle the conditions of the water staying on the landscape for as long as it does. If you look across the road, just beyond where you can see some sandy soil, this is likely the spot where the Tuttle house and barn were before they were moved.We are coming up to the last stop on this tour, and this is one I find to be particularly amazing.
Recovery Zone
In the early marketing and media coverage of the Desert of Maine, there were vast exaggerations of how much sand was exposed. Some brochures said there were 300 or even 500 acres of sand, and almost everyone who talked about the Desert ominously warned that it was growing and might soon take over the whole town. In reality, it was the other way around. After a period of expansion, the forest started reclaiming the land from the dunes in a process called “reforestation.” From 1940 to 1973, the area of exposed sand went from 110 to 52 acres. By 2003, there were 30 acres of exposed sand, and now there are only around 25. You can think of the sand as kind of like a skinned knee. The “skin” or topsoil was scraped off due to intensive farming, but it’s healing around the edges, just as a wound would do. The plants in the recovery zone on the edges have many strategies that help them grow in these harsh conditions. The pines have very high growth rates, the mosses are smaller (tiny but mighty), and many other plants have large numbers of small, abundant, easily dispersed seeds. Still others, like willow trees, are able to tap into seepages by rooting far down into the sand. Nature is very resilient, as we can see just by looking at this landscape.Let’s follow the loop trail and head back to the barn.
Lessons of the Desert
In the early marketing and media coverage of the Desert of Maine, there were vast exaggerations of how much sand was exposed. Some brochures said there were 300 or even 500 acres of sand, and almost everyone who talked about the Desert ominously warned that it was growing and might soon take over the whole town. In reality, it was the other way around. After a period of expansion, the forest started reclaiming the land from the dunes in a process called “reforestation.” From 1940 to 1973, the area of exposed sand went from 110 to 52 acres. By 2003, there were 30 acres of exposed sand, and now there are only around 25. You can think of the sand as kind of like a skinned knee. The “skin” or topsoil was scraped off due to intensive farming, but it’s healing around the edges, just as a wound would do. The plants in the recovery zone on the edges have many strategies that help them grow in these harsh conditions. The pines have very high growth rates, the mosses are smaller (tiny but mighty), and many other plants have large numbers of small, abundant, easily dispersed seeds. Still others, like willow trees, are able to tap into seepages by rooting far down into the sand. Nature is very resilient, as we can see just by looking at this landscape.Let’s follow the loop trail and head back to the barn.
