Julia Zell, New Development Director

Island Heritage Trust is pleased to introduce and welcome our new Development Director, Julia Zell. A life-long lover of the outdoors and passionate about conservation, Julia is an exciting addition to the Island Heritage Trust Team. Some of her favorite times on the preserves are during the winter, covered in snow, and accessed by cross-country skis. With a background as an artist whose work was often informed by the natural environment, she looks forward to bringing her creativity to developing deep connections with the incredible beauty the Trust protects, and fostering strong relationships with the surrounding community.

Please stop by the office to meet her and say hello!

Paul Miller, New Executive Director

Island Heritage Trust is pleased to announce the arrival of Paul Miller as the Trust’s new Executive Director as of June 1st 2018. Mike Little has retired after ten great years with the Trust. Read more about Paul here.

Crystal Cove Preserve

Island Heritage Trust is excited to introduce our newest piece of land, Crystal Cove Preserve. This Oceanville property was generously donated by the Homann family, and will be open for visitors come fall of 2016.

Silent Auction Of Carolyn Caldwell Paintings

Island Heritage Trust is excited to present the silent auction of two Carolyn Caldwell paintings to benefit the Trust. Carolyn has generously offered these paintings, with IHT receiving 50% of the sales price, so that the Trust can “keep preserving the beautiful places we can all enjoy.”

Both paintings are on view at The Island Agency in Stonington. Place your bids by calling 207-348-2455 or by emailing Marissa. For more information about these paintings and to see where the bidding is, click here.

New Faces at the Trust 2015

Island Heritage Trust is pleased to welcome David Vandiver as its new Stewardship Director. David and his family live in Penobscot, and his wife, Marianne, works at Island Family Medicine. He brings us a wealth of experience and a passion for land conservation. For fourteen years – sometimes part time and sometimes full time – David served For Love of Children (FLOC), an outdoor education facility in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. At first working only in the summers, David says at the end of every summer he begged FLOC to stay for a few more days before he had to return to the city, reluctant as he was to leave the outdoor environment he loves. Eventually, they gave in and employed him year round.

FLOC occupies land which is part of a 1600-acre wilderness preserve owned and managed by the Rolling Ridge Foundation, a Virginia land trust which David also served. Realizing that this huge tract of land needed management, David made a proposal to the Foundation and was hired as its first conservation steward. For the next four years he worked to develop mapping, signage and a system for trail maintenance, which had previously been entirely lacking.

Explaining his devotion to the work of land trusts, David recalls a vivid childhood memory. He grew up in the White River Delta area of central Arkansas, where his grandfather, who supported himself by hunting and fishing, lived in a cabin in the midst of a large tract of privately owned land, fully wooded, susceptible to regular flooding, and adjacent to a large state owned wildlife refuge. When the land came up for sale, a group of citizens banded together to persuade the state to buy it and add it to the existing wildlife refuge. The state pleaded poverty, and the land was purchased by two brothers who planned to farm it. David’s grandfather warned them all about the flooding. But the Corps of Engineers planned to build a levee, despite his grandfathe’s warning that no levee could be sufficient to stem the flooding. Nonetheless, reassured by the Corps of Engineers, the brothers totally stripped the land, burning all the wood. The community, David recalls, never got over it. Every Sunday afternoon folks would gather and watch the burning woodland in horror and dismay.

Thirty odd years later the land came back up for sale. It turned out the brothers had never been able to farm the land profitably – principally because of the flooding about which David’s grandfather had warned them. With the timber long gone and after 25 years of fruitless plowing, some six feet of topsoil had been lost. The citizens regrouped. And this time, they were able to raise the money, together with support from the state, and purchase the land. They have begun replanting trees. But the consensus is that it will never be the same. The futile loss of luxuriant woodland is something that David has never forgotten.

Holding a master’s degree in divinity, David spent a number of years as part time Pastor at the Brooksville United Methodist Church. His theological background, combined with his childhood experience in the White River Delta and his subsequent work for FLOC and Rolling Ridge Foundation, have instilled in him, he says, a passion for land conservation. The earth, he believes, “comes to us as a gift that we can never repay. We must care for it as best as we can.”

Welcome, David Vandiver.

7th Graders’ Beach Grass Project At Causeway Beach

Martha Bell, Island Heritage Trust Environmental Educator, along with Mickie Flores, DISES Middle School Science teacher, and a handful of her 7th graders continue the work of studying and encouraging the strong growth of Causeway Beach’s Beach Grass this May. After having placed the flags up around the strip of grass last fall, the protected beach grass has shown great progress as it grew out beyond the flags!

BATS Need Your Help

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO BATS ON MOUNT DESERT ISLAND?

Story by Bruce Connery
Fall/Winter 2013 Friends of Acadia Journal

Rowan Wakefield Award

Long time IHT supporters Ken and Marnie Crowell were honored with the 2009 Rowan Wakefield Award at the Annual Meeting on July 8, 2009. Named for one of IHT’s most active and best-loved early presidents, the Rowan Wakefield Award is given “… to the individual, selected by the Trustees of the Island Heritage Trust, whose outstanding work has exemplified the mission of the Island Heritage Trust to conserve significant open space, scenic areas, wildlife habitats, natural resources, and historic and cultural features that offer public benefit and are essential to the character of the Deer Isle area.”

Ancient Materials Come to Light in Scott’s Landing Archaeological Dig

Holding artifacts that not seen the light of day for over 2,000 years, a group of amateur and professional archaeologists unearthed ancient materials from a shell midden illustrating life in the Early Archaic and Ceramic periods of Deer Isle’s paleo-Indian ancestors at Scott’s Landing this summer.

Blessed with good weather, over 20 amateur archaeologists and islanders dug and meticulously screened a small patch of the island’s newest preserve in late June and early July. After a lecture and welcoming meal at Ann and Roger Hooke’s the night before, Cox led his own archaeological team and the community participants through an enthralling but exhausting sun- up to sun-down field school on the shores of Eggemoggin Reach.

Cox’s team has worked with him on many other digs so they were paired up with community members to learn proper archaeological field techniques and how to recognize materials such as stone tools, pottery, food remains, and cultural features such as hearths and tent floors. Cox and others taught the more inexperienced participants how to record and interpret results and protect fragile artifacts for future study.

Scott's Landing Archaeological Dig

From the photo of the materials, one can see how crucial it is when excavating a site that everything be carefully removed from a site and its location recorded with precision.

Many community members remarked on the effort expended and time needed to protect the detailed history and important information that is available in a professionally supervised dig.

Scott's Landing Archaeological Dig

IHT President and anthropologist Bill Haviland says in his book, Deer Isle’s Original People, that “Once taken out of context, objects by themselves tell us next to nothing. Thus to dig around in archaeological sites looking for relics destroys them and the information they contain as effectively as if they were bulldozed into oblivion.”

He goes to say that Paleo-indian sites are generally “very small briefly but repeatedly by small groups of people – perhaps 1 or 2 families together.”
Often the sites were used for seasonal camping, fishing and harvesting for a highly mobile people who worked closely in clans and small units.
Steve Cox will be providing an in-depth public lecture about the findings of the Scotts Landing sometime in the fall of 2007.

Many thanks to Ken and Marnie Reed Crowell for their key role in creating this great opportunity for Deer Isle and the IHT and to the Bar Harbor Bank and Trust and the Island Education Foundation and other donors who underwrote the cost of the field school.

Scott's Landing Archaeological Dig

Dr. Steve Cox has over three decades of field school experience and has led excavations for the Maine State Museum and the Abbe Museum. He is currently an Adjunct Curator for the Maine State Museum.

Cox’s team included Betsy Webster, Diane Kopec, Donna Madonna, Jacob Freedman, Laurie Labar, Robert and Sandy Lewis, Robin Marion, Stephanie Wagner, and Susan Blaisdell.

Community members were 18 year-old islanders Greta Avis and Brittany Pottle, Joanie Banks, teachers Pam Cohen and Stephanie Lee, Tom and Marilyn Mehalic, Cathy Hart, Wilson Museum Director Patty Hutchins, Ken Schweikert, and Marion Foss.