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Cranberry Isles Stands a World Apart
Barbara Stainton,
owner of the Cranberry General Store, has been an island
resident since 1985 and thinks nothing of the isolation. David
Stainton, her husband, is one of the town’s selectmen. |
Theoretical
question: Where in Hancock County could America’s richest couple,
Microsoft magnates Bill and Melinda Gates, go for a week in the
summer and not make the news?
Cranberry Isles is
the answer, and it’s not just a theoretical answer, either.
That really
happened last summer. Drawn to the coast of Maine like so many
others from away, the Gates were guests on Great Cranberry island.
Not surprisingly,
they barely raised an eyebrow among the locals, mingling and mixing
in the Cranberry General Store and playing tennis with the other
fancy summer folks.
Word hardly left
the island that the Gates were there, because that’s how
matter-of-factly the locals handle occasions like that. Located
about 15 minutes by boat out of Northeast Harbor, the islands have a
history of well-heeled company coming through—and no one letting on.
“You can be famous
and buzz around here and no one notices,” said Barbara Stainton,
owner of the Cranberry General Store. “It’s like Northeast Harbor
without the social pressure.”
Richard Beal, chair
of the town’s three selectmen, said of summer visitors, “They dress
like us, talk like us, act like us. They just don’t have the bank
accounts that we do.”
Cranberry Isles, as
a town, is a peculiar place, all right. Wealthy summer residents and
visitors have been part of the local landscape for about 115 years.
The town spreads
over five islands, each of them smaller than the other. But only two
of them have year-round residents—Great Cranberry, with 44, and
Little Cranberry, with 77 concentrated in the village of Isleford.
In summers, each island community billows to about 500 or 600 at the
season’s height.
Some of those head
to Sutton Island, which has 28 homes and a strict no-cars
policy—made easier in that there actually are no roads there. People
simply use footpaths and carry groceries and everything else in
wheelbarrows.
Even Baker Island
has three or four taxpayers, although they also appear only in
summer. Bear Island, the smallest of the five, is appended to Little
Cranberry Island by a three-quarter-mile sandbar.
The combination
mailboat and ferry runs between Great Cranberry and Islesford six
times a day in summer. But islanders admit that otherwise, there
isn’t much mixing between the two.
There is a proud,
natural rivalry, however. Each island has its own general store,
post office, church, library, historical society and school.
(Trouble is, too few students on Great Cranberry led to the
Longfellow School’s temporary closing about three years ago. The
remaining student, eight-year-old Brittany McKelvin, takes the boat
over to Islesford each day).
Residents of both
islands come together a few times a year. They gather for the town
meeting, which alternates locations, and for town fairs and suppers
in summer.
Living there
demands both independence and interdependence.
“You have to know
how to take care of yourself,” said Richard Beal, who moved to Great
Cranberry four years ago from Ellsworth. His island family roots
extend back to 1752.
“When we go
off-island, we wear our good clothes, our funeral clothes. On the
island, we are practical and wear our flannel shirts.
“We go by a lot of
common sense out here.”
Selectmen have
expressed that they at times feel Cranberry Isles is perhaps Hancock
County’s most overlooked place. Those who have homes there know it,
but it is otherwise not big in the public’s perception.
“The water is
inhibiting,” David Stainton said. “But we are only 15 minutes by
boat to Mount Desert, and 45 minutes total to Ellsworth. We are not
any further than any other Hancock County town.”
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