The Island Today

A. W. Longfellow's manuscript plan lays out the island's named features — Bayberry Ridge, Rock Terrace, the Meadows, Lobster Cove, Spring Cove, White Head. The road network of the summer island is being drawn before most of it is built.

The Ilsley & Cummings lot map shows parcels already sold in dotted outline along the island's roads, and blocks out the southern shore for the United States Government. The avenue is now a property line as much as a route.

The Ottawa House burns. What the road served at its western end no longer exists; what it serves at its southern end — the fort — is expanding. No image of the avenue in this year is held here.

The southern end of the island is a working coast-defense reservation. Whether the resort-era roads were regraded for military traffic, and where, is not established by any source in this history.

Sunken road cuts, stone walls parallel to grade, and long-worn shoulders. This history treats the road corridor as a layered feature: Wabanaki travel, colonial path, resort avenue and service route are not separable on the ground without excavation.

White Head appears as a named feature on Longfellow's plan, alongside Spring Cove and the Meadows.

Harrison Bird Brown paints the cliff for Sargent's Historical Sketch. The image the island sells of itself starts here.

A linen postcard reproduces the same face for the tourist trade — the picture outliving the painting by half a century.

Vertical joint fractures, a weathered profile in the south wall often read as a face, deep water at the base. The cliff is this site's most reliable then-and-now comparison because it has barely moved.