93 Water Street PO Box 122
Eastport, ME 04631-0122
207-853-2400
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Eastport Characteristics
Downtown Eastport is "waiting to be discovered", according to Down East Magazine, and a windshield tour is all it takes to see why. Signs of economic distress, vacant storefronts and structural disrepair fail to overwhelm the historic integrity and natural beauty of a place that has enticed artists for more than 100 years.
Our waterfront is stunning with its vista of Canadian Islands, deep natural harbor and awesome tides. With high water up to 28 feet, Eastport tides are among the greatest in the world and create Old Sow, the Western Hemisphere’s largest whirlpool, fully visible from land at numerous points. Two downtown piers create a protected harbor for the local fishing fleet, a base for the US Coast Guard, and tie-ups for two commercial tugs and visitor boats. ("They are so cute", is the standard visitor reaction to the highly photographed tugs.)
Eastport continues to attract artists, photographers, and filmmakers with its charm and beauty and with the arrival of two new artists, one from New York City, the other from New Mexico, is currently home to six permanent galleries. It also served as the setting for a recent television commercial and a made-for-television movie called Murder in Small Town X.
Almost overnight, the movie crew transformed all of downtown Eastport into a vibrant village center with artful street lighting, shop displays and signage. It was a wondrous vision of small-town America, of what small-town America used to be. People from all over the region flocked to Eastport just to ooh and aah at the beauty of it all.
At one level, it was artifice; at another, real in its essence. The people of Eastport have held fast to the small-town values that in so many places are no more than nostalgic memories. This is a town where people still leave their doors unlocked, where your neighbor shovels your walk, where the only car in sight stops to let you cross the street.
Eastport is not an idealized, Disneyesque version of a Maine coastal community. If Maine is the way life should be, Eastport is the way Maine was. It is the real deal.