Low-Cost Homesteads Offered : Island in Maine Attracts New Residents

Residents of this pristine island town are luring city dwellers with offers of low-cost land and homes in an attempt to stop Frenchboro from becoming just another tourist spot along Maine’s scenic coast.

Sanford Lunt, his family and their neighbors developed the homestead plan after years of watching residents forsake the island for the mainland.

The first homesteaders arrived recently, and by Christmas the rest are expected to be living on the island, most of which is owned by the heirs of Nelson A. Rockefeller.

“These people are great,” said Steve Beote, a 27-year-old electrician who moved from Salem, Mass. “You don’t find people like this in Massachusetts anymore.”

Beote’s and six other families were chosen from about 300 applicants to move onto the 2,500-acre island, officially called Long Island, across Blue Hill Bay from the mainland.

Drop in Population

Between 1960 and 1980, Frenchboro’s population dropped from 57 to 43 as young residents left for the mainland and older residents died.

About the same time, vacationers discovered the island, with its clear, accommodating harbor and proximity to the popular resort town of Bar Harbor, 25 miles away by boat.

The island’s attractiveness concerned residents, who prefer a relaxed life without distractions from the outside world, said Lunt, 78, the island’s oldest resident.

“We’re getting down in population, and if it gets down too far it might be all summer people,” Lunt said, with bent nails protruding from his mouth as he repaired a lobster trap. “We don’t want that to happen.”

A twice-a-week ferry that takes 40 minutes connects the mainland with the island, which has no doctors, year-round stores, public telephones or traffic lights.

Islanders say life has a special meaning here, and, as if to prove the point, they feed plump “wild” deer by hand and ducks and geese outside their doorsteps.

No Worry About Break-Ins

“It’s a good place; it’s quiet, and you don’t have to worry about anyone breaking in on you at night,” Lunt said.

The homesteaders who have already arrived have been helping to build their own houses in thick pine woodland, about half a mile from the Atlantic Ocean. The rest of the town faces the harbor, where lobstermen sell their catch to a wholesale lobster pound.

The seven homestead families are renting the newly built homes for 3 years and later will purchase them at below-market prices. The homes are scattered among about 55 acres of land donated by wealthy heirs of Rockefeller, the late vice president. The construction was paid for with $400,000 in federal community development money.

Walter Pietrowski, who moved to the island a few months ago, said Frenchboro offers a tranquility he never found amid the hustle and bustle of New Haven, Conn., where he, his wife and three children lived.

“Sometimes you sit and you just don’t hear anything,” Pietrowski said. “It’s strange, but I like it.”

Screening Process

Pietrowski and the other homesteaders were awarded their land and homes after a selection and screening process by a panel of islanders and state officials.

Most of the homesteaders have young families, and the men have worked in such trades as carpentry and pipe fitting.

Kerry Hartman, hired to educate the island’s seven elementary school students in its one-room schoolhouse, said that what attracted him to Frenchboro, among other things, was the harbor, which is littered only with lobster buoys.

“It’s like having Arcadia National Park in your back yard, except there’s no tourists,” said Hartman, a 26-year-old Bar Harbor transplant. The national park takes up most of the island on which Bar Harbor is located.

Much of the credit for saving the island goes to the Lunts, whose ancestors settled here in 1822. The family, which makes up half the island’s population, was the impetus behind the homesteading project, and has made sure that all the newcomers are warmly welcomed.

“It’s more a family than it is a town,” said Warren (Pard) Higgins, an island lobsterman. “Everybody helps everybody out whenever there’s a problem.”