The fishing cabins that once perched on the rocks of Willard Beach in South Portland were part of a childhood that Maureen Connolly described Monday as “quintessential Maine.”
The cabins, with lobster buoys hanging from their walls, had served as a backdrop for photographers and painters inspired by the rocky coast, with its drifting sailboats and canoes floating in the water.
The cabins, at least 150 years old, no longer exist. On Saturday, the last of them were swept into Casco Bay by waves of wind and water caused by a powerful storm on the East Coast.
Ms. Connolly and others with a connection to South Portland learned of their destruction in a widely shared video showing them falling into the water.
Ms. Connolly, now 61 and living in North Carolina, remembers riding her bike to the beach, with its view of distant islands and oil tankers at sea. crabs or to dangle their toes in the water at low tide.
“We took photos there. You would sit on the steps of fishermen’s huts or walk with friends,” she said in an interview on Monday. “Pack a brown bag. This is the walk you took. That’s what we did.
No more. The water level in Portland Harbor set a record 14.57 feet Saturday, the National Weather Service said, when Michelle Erskine recorded video of the last two shacks tipped into the water.
“Oh no, they’re both going,” she could be heard saying. “Oh no.”
“It was like history was disappearing before your eyes,” said Kathryn DiPhilippo, executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.
But South Portland residents refused to give up on Sunday. Mayor Misha Pride took a stroll along the cold beach. He estimates about 50 people attended. A few collected shards of wood, metal or other debris. A woman erected a small memorial to the cabins. Online, others shared photographs of the cabins in the background of family gatherings.
“They meant so much to so many people — milestone events, weddings, people playing by the ocean in their youth, school field trips,” Mr. Pride said in an interview. There’s not much left, he added. “The only impression they leave on people is a mental impression. There is very little evidence of their presence.
The fishing shacks at Fishermen’s Point, a rock ledge at the southern end of the beach, represented the maritime history of the community located about 60 miles south of the capital Augusta.
In the 1870s and 1880s, Willard Beach and Simonton Cove served as a base for a dozen schooners. Wooden cabins were built to store nets and fishing gear, DiPhilippo said. Over the years, their numbers dwindled as they disappeared due to storms.
After the blizzard of 1978, which marked the previous water level record of 14.17 feet, only two cabins remained. They were destroyed on Saturday.
“These last two cabins are the ones that have stood strong and that our community cherishes and cares for,” Ms. DiPhilippo said. “The videos showing the huts being swept away by the waters were heartbreaking to watch. »
In 2022, after years of increasingly powerful storms, the historical society brought in architects who measured the two cabins and drew up plans in case they were one day destroyed. The historical society plans to raise funds to try to rebuild them.
After his walk on the beach, Mr. Pride said, his 10-year-old daughter, Lucy, asked him how the beloved cabins that had survived so long could finally disappear. Why now?
“The wind was bad,” he told her. “And the ocean rose.”