Some history of the beach

Singing Sands Beach and last third (or so) of Andrew’s Beach

By Elizabeth M. Burke, May 11, 2010

My parents bought the Long Island property in 1954. Prior to that, it was owned by the Jones Real Estate Co from 1895 until 1954. Below is a more extensive history of ownership.

My memories of the beach are inextricably bound to my memories of going to the cabin my father built at the island. I was born in 1961, not long after my father started expanding on what he first built, a lobster shack, into a two-room split level cottage (with most of the cabin built of things he hauled from the sea—and the cabin’s construction is really rather remarkable—huge beams resting on each other and hardly a nail to be seen), and so I grew up from my earliest years going every summer to the beach.

The cabin was for many years vandalized over the winter, and we’d arrive in the spring with windows busted out, furniture axed, the like. It was frightening for me to see that. During my youth my father would sometimes get up at night and take his gun with him and walk around the cabin—I presumed because he was afraid someone would try to vandalize the place while we were there.

There were big flocks of sand pipers that scurried up and down the beach at the tide’s edge for most of my youth. Those have sadly disappeared.

Because the mooring in that sandy-bottomed cove wouldn’t necessarily hold tight in a very high storm (why, I think, it has never been a working cove, as Wes Johnson has suggested), my father would wake us up in the middle of the night if one of those storms was hitting and bundle us into his small metal boat for a very rough ride back to Falmouth.

When I was ten, the summer my parents divorced, Andrew and I lived with my father at the cabin for most of the summer while my father built the current “out house.” Dad had found timbers floating in the ocean where they’d broken from a dam over a winter, and we pee-veed them up the beach to the site. It was your usual shitter for many years. We have had a composting toilet there for about eight years.

Andrew got in a leaky dory he’d outfitted with an outboard and putt over to work for Ted Rand or Stanley McVane. Leaky is a nice word for that dory. We’d get up in the morning and the only thing you could see were the gunnels.

I cooked meals that summer on an old wood cook stove. We got a gas stove a few years later, or maybe the same time we got a new gas refrigerator… I don’t recall. I even made bread in that wood cook stove. We washed our dishes on the beach by scrubbing them with beach sand and then rinsing them in the ocean. I hauled laundry to Portland, or washed it on the front porch using an old washer board using the rain water we collected in the old whiskey barrels. I also cut the lawn with a old scythe.

My mother kept the beach property after my parents got divorced and was more welcoming to visitors. Since her death in 1986, John, Andrew and I have maintained the policy she established around 1982—no fires, no alcohol, no radios, no dogs, and visitors between the hours of 9-5 only, plus we reserve the section close to the cabin for cabin users only. There have been times that beach has filled up so much, the sand was covered with people as it is in the summer at Higgins Beach, or worse, at Old Orchard. The cove has gotten twenty boats tied up together and all the adults in their boats getting drunk, while they let loose the kids and dogs—half of them running up to the Shulman’s and peering into her house.

We’ve had to keep pretty close tabs on the beach, because non-islanders (boaters or summer renters) usually don’t bother to check to see if property is private when they set out for a picnic, and they’ll camp right up to our front porch and ask for the toilet. I had a troupe of thirteen teenage girls and their camp leader arrive on a big sail boat last summer and they were planning on camping out on our lawn. I find strangers wandering all over our property, picking my blueberries, peering through my windows at times. It’s unnerving to come out of the cabin or my yurt bare naked because I’ve come off from the beach from a swim and am showering up outside, only to be confronted by total strangers.

I suppose they confuse the state property section of Andrew’s Beach with Singing Sands. Regular visitors get the drill and generally support us, because they recognize that the beach is so lovely—for quiet family outings, swimming, meditation. We have worked hard to preserve those qualities—to protect that natural resource and the dunes, and it can be a lot of work.

Asking people to leave is never a pleasant experience, and yet it happens every summer. People will literally sit smack down in front of the Private Property sign and the rules, pop open their beers, unpack their grill, and go right about doing what they want, as if it were their own back yard. You ask them to follow the rules nicely the first time, they don’t; you ask them a second time, they ignore you or tell you to go away (or worse); you tell them to leave, they don’t. They become belligerent. I’ve had people in my face threatening me. Then we have to call the police.

Back when the Marchons sold their portion of Andrew’s Beach to the State, the State erected a sign indicating where the State beach ended and private property began. That was promptly torn down over the following winter. Our Private Property signs continue to get torn down and disposed of every winter. To me, that’s like someone going up to your house and ripping your house number off, or throwing your porch furniture into the ocean.

The name “Singing Sands” is not on any map. I think it should go on a map. (Well, I think a decent map of the island is overdue.) It is a common name given by the islanders, though some called it “Little Beach,” and called Andrew’s Beach (aka South Beach, also aka Sandy Beach) “Big Beach.” The only long-standing map demarcation is that the beach lies in Shark Cove. I’ve consulted a number of map sources. The only officially mapped name for a beach on the south side is “Andrew’s Beach”… what is now 2/3 State park and one-third (thereabouts) Burke property.

Recently, people have started calling Andrew’s Beach (aka South Beach) “Singing Sands,” and advertising it as such—on the web. The glossy high-end Travel and Leisure has gotten on the band-wagon. Andrew’s Beach (South Beach) is nice, but the sand that collects there isn’t of fine white crystals and doesn’t “sing”, as does the sand on Singing Sands Beach. Stanley MacVane says every Long Islander knows that with the tone of voice that says you were born knowing that if you were a native islander. One person has posted pictures of Singing Sands Beach (commonly, historically called) on the web almost as if it were a public beach and with some suggestions the site was created by a public entity because of the url: www.longislandmaine.us/photos/tag/singing-sands-beach. I finally tracked him down and he argued that the beach was public based on the tax maps created by the island—despite the very clear posting by the island that the tax map was not meant for determining property boundaries. He was vehement the beach was public. That will create more problems for us—more people arriving who believe the beach is public and argue with us. More calling the police. I suppose if our signs keep mysteriously disappearing in the winter, someone must want to raise the overall island financial needs and tax base. I can’t get my head around it. Maybe the solution is to close the beach to all but island residents—for their exclusive visiting use, as Dr. Rockefeller does with his property in Falmouth. Just put up a sign saying “Private Property, for walks and bathing by residents only”… so I don’t find five dogs yapping, radios blaring, and drunks trying to play Frisbee in those summer moments I finally get to enjoy my property and when I want to hear the sea against the sand and watch the flight of the least tern in the cove.


History of Ownership / Sales of the Beach Property

Singing Sands Beach and last about third of Andrew’s Beach (now commonly called South Beach), plus property behind the beaches.—or Lot 7 of the Estate of Jeremiah Cushing.

History of when Griffith bought property from estate not yet found.

May 31, 1830: David Griffin sold it to Benjamin Cushing on May 31, 1830.

April 14, 1846: Benjamin Cushing (mariner) sold the property to David Griffith, of Portland, Maine, for $200.

History from Griffith to Marston not yet found.

March 19, 1889: Mary E. Marston and 4 others each sold their 1/5 interest of the property and also the Nubble to Charles P. Ingraham, Horatio N. Jose, and John E Tewksbury.

January 9, 1895: Charles P. Ingraham, John C. Tukesbury and H. N. Jose sold to Jones Real Estate Co.

1954: Jones Real Estate Company to Elizabeth C. Burke and Lawrence M. Burke, Jr.
On the deed for the lot with the beach, reference is made to “Lot No. 7 on plan of Division of the Estate of Jeremiah Cushing” which was bounded sea-ward “by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the division line between this land hereby conveyed and the “Nubble”.