Isle au Haut, Maine — If you take the ferry to Isle au Haut, an island community far off the coast of Maine, you can visit a gift shop and general store. And that’s it, because there are no other businesses on the island.
“The people who live here are resilient and creative,” Bob Olney, president of the Isle au Haut Community Development Corporation, told CBS News. But there aren’t enough, Olney said.
The island’s population fluctuates between 45 and 50 people. “It is essential that we continue to attract families,” Olney said.
Last year, this community posted on social media and the island’s official website in hopes of recruiting a new family. They were careful not to oversell the place.
“While it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, who knows, it just might be yours,” the post read.
And they got a taker: a young family from central Massachusetts.
Dakota and Hannah Waters and their children Flynn and Amelia moved here a few months ago.
“Our whole family thought we were psychotic,” Hannah said. “They say, ‘A remote island in the middle of the ocean?'”
And yet here they live, the newest members of a dying breed. At one point there were about 300 communities on Maine’s most isolated islands. Now there are just over a dozen. And to keep communities alive it will be necessary to attract people who want a different lifestyle, people who value solitude more than Starbucks, and who really don’t mind a little setback.
“People have traded the good life for an easy life,” Hannah said. “And convenience isn’t always the best.”
Until then, the Waters grow some of their own food and work multiple jobs. Dakota does plumbing, lawn maintenance and even works on a lobster boat. As for the children, Flynn was one of only two students who attended school in the island’s K-8 schoolhouse.
The place is just so small. But Dakota says smallness is more of a blessing than a curse.
“We have so much more time to bond with the kids,” Dakota said. “It’s indescribably healthy.”
Hannah plans for the family to stay.
“I’m not going to get my stuff off this rock again,” Hannah said. “It was too hard to get it here.”
Steve Hartman
