‘Oh No, They’re Both Gone’: Beloved Maine Fishing Shacks Tumble Into Bay

The fishing shacks that once perched on the rocks at Willard Beach in South Portland were part of a childhood that Maureen Connolly described on Monday as “quintessential Maine.”

The shacks, with lobster buoys hanging from their walls, had served as a backdrop for photographers and painters inspired by the rocky coastline, with its sailboats drifting by and dinghies bobbing in the water.

The shacks, which were at least 150 years old, are no more. On Saturday, the last of them were swept into Casco Bay by surges of wind and water from a powerful East Coast storm.

Ms. Connolly and others with a connection to South Portland learned of their destruction in a widely shared video of them tumbling into the water.

Ms. Connolly, now 61 and living in North Carolina, recalled riding her bike to the beach, with its views of distant islands and tankers at sea. She would climb down the steps of the shacks to look for crabs or to dangle her toes in the water at low tide.

“We took pictures there. You sat on the steps of the fishing shacks, or took walks with friends,” she said in an interview on Monday. “Pack a brown bag. That was the walk you took. It’s what we did.”

Not anymore. The water level in Portland Harbor set a record of 14.57 feet on Saturday, the National Weather Service said, when Michelle Erskine recorded the video of the last two shacks toppling into the water.

“Oh no, they’re both going,” she could be heard saying. “Oh no.”

“It was like history disappearing before your eyes,” said Kathryn DiPhilippo, the executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.

But South Portland residents were refusing to let go on Sunday. Mayor Misha Pride took a walk along the cold beach. He estimated about 50 people were there. A few were salvaging shards of wood, metal or other bits of wreckage. One woman erected a small memorial for the shacks. Online, others shared photographs of the shacks in the background of family gatherings.

“They meant so much to so many people — milestones, weddings, people playing by the ocean in their youth, school field trips,” Mr. Pride said in an interview. Not much remains, he added. “The only impression they are leaving for people is a mental impression. There is very little evidence they were there.”

The fishing shacks at Fishermen’s Point, a rocky ledge at the southern end of the beach, represented the maritime history of the community, which lies about 60 miles south of the capital of Augusta.

In the 1870s and 1880s, Willard Beach and Simonton Cove thrived as a base for about a dozen schooners. Wooden shacks were built to store nets and fishing gear, Ms. DiPhilippo said. Over the years, their numbers dwindled as they were lost to storms.

After the blizzard of 1978, which marked the previous water level record of 14.17 feet, only two shacks remained. They were destroyed on Saturday.

“These last two shacks have been the ones that have stubbornly held on, and which our community treasured and cared for,” Ms. DiPhilippo said. “Videos showing the shacks washing away have been heartbreaking to watch.”

In 2022, after years of progressively more powerful storms, the historical society reached out to architects who measured the two shacks and drew up plans in case they were ever destroyed. The historical society is planning to raise funds in a bid to rebuild them.

After his walk on the beach, Mr. Pride said, his 10-year old daughter, Lucy, asked him how the beloved shanties that had survived for so long could finally be gone. Why now?

“Wind was bad,” he told her. “And the ocean rose.”