White Head

The pale granite headland that gives White Head Passage its name — a 150-foot cliff described by early travellers, painted by Harrison Bird Brown for Sargent's 1886 sketch, and printed on Casco Bay linen postcards through the mid-20th century. The island's most photographed natural feature.

• Vertical joint fractures give the cliff its stacked, blocky face.
• A weathered profile in the south wall is often read as a human face.
• Deep water at the base — the Passage carried commercial shipping.

Read this cliff as a navigation aid, not a viewpoint. For four centuries mariners used its white face to fix their position when entering Casco Bay from the eastward.

1. 1.How did the appearance of this cliff change what mariners called the Passage?
2. 2.Which paintings and postcards in the archive show the same face you see today?

Distances are straight-line from recorded coordinates. Island roads curve, so allow more time than the estimate.

• Plan of Cushing Islandca. 1888
• Map of Cushing Islandca. 1888
• White Head, Cushing Island, Portland Harbor, ca. 1928ca. 1928
• An Historical Sketch, Guide Book, and Prospectus of Cushing's Island1886