Popham Beach and Fort Popham
Popham Beach Island
This post was originally published August 3, 2017.
Before the pilgrims settled down on Plymouth Rock, settlers were arriving to Maine for fish and lumber, and Phippsburg, a little, coastal town, was the first English colony to be established in America at the date of 1607. Specifically, at Popham. The settlers couldn’t handle the Maine winters, and I don’t blame them—I skipped out on one to go to Ireland—but they did return a hundred years later, in what would soon become a popular tourist site.
Popham Beach was rolling in a thick fog the day I arrived. At times, it became so dense that all I could see were the seagulls a towel over, running off with some poor girl’s lunch. As I laid on my own beach towel for hours lamenting the cloud I was enveloped in, the fog suddenly began to split. I tossed aside my copy of And The Mountains Echoed, grabbed my camera, and ran for the waves.
My favorite part of Popham Beach is the island that is only accessible during low tide. A comfortably long walk along the shoreline and an optional wade through shallow water brought me to an island, not quite large enough for any expensive homes but large enough for plenty of well-deserved foot traffic. With kids screeching over the sight of crabs in the seaweed covered rocks, I hiked to the top of the rocky island to catch a view of the beach behind me and the ocean that spread for miles in the opposite direction.
Past the inlets forged by retreating tides and the many cottages built further down the beach is Fort Popham. Built during the Civil War to protect the city of Bath, the fort sports many of the same architectural designs as parts of Fort Knox, which began construction less than 20 years prior. Under tall brick archways overlaid with stone, soldiers could aim their weapons at oncoming enemy vessels. Like other Maine forts built in the late 1800s, Fort Popham saw no actual warfare and was, in fact, never completed. The small battery that sat in its place prior to the fort’s construction, however, saw minor action in the War of 1812, when the U.K. returned to reclaim parts of Maine.
Popham’s water was warm in the summer heat, and its sand held many hidden treasures, such as large shells and sand dollars. Despite heavy fog, the area was filled with families enjoying their day off. The fort, on the contrary, had few people wandering within it. I walked the entire fort with my flipflops pattering on the marble floor, undisturbed except for the distant sloshing of water against the fort’s walls. The fog later reappeared, creeping over the boats that were moored at the nearby pier, while I hopped back into my car to make the long journey back home.
