#04 - Capturing the Fort
The Authors Trace Gus’s Footsteps in Popham, Maine
Cathy Jewitt & John Meader, Authors
John Meader, Photo & Content Editor
Gus’s postcard of Fort Popham, #264. Courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum.
Greetings! We’re sending you postcards from Fort Popham. They’re from Gus and both of us, Cathy and John. And this time, we take you along with us on our adventure, give you some background history on the fort and Gus’s visits, and invite you to hear a local historian tell his story of an unusually large 4th of July explosion.
Fort Popham is an example of a closed lunette type of fort, with two projecting faces and parallel flanks. [^1]
Photo of Fort Popham at dawn by John Meader.
In early October, we visited both the Phippsburg Historical Society and explored the fort, re-discovering the exact spot where Gus had taken his photograph for Fort Popham (postcard # 86) 50 years ago. John had the farthest to drive that morning; I’ll let him share his story now:
“4:27 a.m. The alarm will go off in three minutes. I wonder if it is clear outside. Stumbling to my feet, I reach down and turn off the alarm before it awakens Laura. Looking out the window, I don’t see any stars. Overcast. What are the chances of a sunrise at Popham? The warm bed beckons, but the adventure of the day beckons stronger. Would Gus have gone back to bed? Not a chance.
6:30 a.m. I drive into the circular parking lot at Fort Popham; the only others there are a few fishermen readying their boats for the day. A young couple in dreadlocks, sipping coffee, is waiting their turn at the small dock to load bait into their skiff. I shut off the engine and look at my watch. Eight minutes until the sun peaks over the horizon.
It’s totally overcast except for a thin, clear line along the southeastern horizon. I have a shot to capture the sunrise at the fort. It won’t last long. The air is brisk, but still, and when the sun peeks over the Gulf of Maine its light is yellow and warm. It’s a spectacular moment, inspired by a man I’ve never met, and it makes me smile. In another 10 minutes the sun has crossed the clear sky line and is hidden by the bank of clouds overhead.”
- John
Popham at sunrise, photo by John Meader.
While John was photographing the sunrise at Popham, I was eating breakfast and gathering the notes and postcards I planned to take with me to the Phippsburg Historical Society that morning for our 9 a.m. appointment. I had already reviewed Gus’s travel binders and researched the advertisements that drew visitors to Popham during the summer of 1970. Tourists coming to Vacationland were helping Mainers celebrate the state’s sesquicentennial. Fort Popham was included as one of only 15 sites written up in that year’s Vacation Planner. Produced by the Maine Department of Economic Development, the brochure stated that “to pay a personal visit to an historic shrine is to receive a concept such as no book can supply.”
Both Gus and the visitors that summer knew this to be true; they turned off US Route one in Bath to wind down the Phippsburg peninsula. A few lines from the Vacation Planner summarized Popham: “Semi-circular granite fort; fortifications here have guarded the Kennebec River during the Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, and the Spanish War. Nearby, in 1607 the English made their first attempt to colonize New England. A little further west, markings on a boulder indicate Vikings had landed here earlier. Excellent beach nearby at Popham Beach State Park. 15 miles from Bath on Rt. #209.” [^2]
This commemorative boulder marks the location of the 1607 Popham Colony where Virginia, the first English sailing vessel, was built in North America. Photo by John Meader.
Undoubtedly, Gus put thousands of miles on the Rambler during the summer and fall months for just this reason, revisiting the places he had scrambled around or flown over when he captured them in photographs. As a small-town Mainer, Gus loved to chew the fat with locals; stories—often passed down through several generations—made the history come alive. We can trace Gus’s travels that summer from the careful records he kept.
Airview of Popham, Ray Goodrich vintage postcard. Courtesy of Thomas C. Totman.
On June 5th, Gus delivered an order of 4,000 postcards to Fred Spinney at his Popham Beach store. The day before he had visited Moore’s Market in Bath and dropped off an order of 200 cards. In July, he returned, this time stopping at Percy’s Store in Popham Beach to deliver 750 cards. Gus notes in his brown binder: 200 Fort Popham, 200 Fort Popham aerial, 200 Pond Island, 100 Seguin, and 50 miscellaneous Maine Coast. Gus often noted the pilots that took him aloft; in this case it was George Robbins who flew him over Seguin and Pond Island. [^3]
Two of the postcards that Gus delivered to Percy’s Store. Left: Seguin Island Lighthouse, #323 Right: Pond Island Lighthouse, #324.
Passengers on the Popham Beach Steamboat Co.’s Eldorado in 1900. Photo courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum, the James Perkins Collection.
During the early 1900s, passengers on pleasure excursions traveled by steamship to view offshore sights, which in Popham would have included the lighthouses Gus photographed from the air many years later. James E. Perkins, a Popham native, steamboat captain, and self-taught photographer, frequently took pictures of his passengers. Big hotels like the Riverside and the Rockledge attracted visitors from Boston, New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the century. These hotels with their summer guests were vital to the year round local economy, providing employment and valuable opportunities for the local youth to explore avenues beyond the peninsula. Many young people worked in this service industry and developed relationships with the summer visitors, opening up opportunities for travel and furthering their education.
The Riverside Hotel postcard. Courtesy of Thomas C. Totman.
The wait staff at the Riverside Hotel, 1900. Note the formally posed photo on the left versus the lighthearted camaraderie present in the photo on the right. Who is the woman in the window? Courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum, the James Perkins Collection.
Fort Popham visits are ingrained in many people’s memories; for example, writer William Morgan remembers a remarkable childhood journey to Popham. “When I was 11,” Morgan writes, “and attending Camp Tacoma Pines in Litchfield, Maine, a group of us paddled canoes all the way from Gardiner, past destroyers being built at Bath Iron Works, through the tricky and often dangerous channels, and all the way to the mouth of the Kennebec and the sea. I am amazed now that we were allowed to make this trip. But what I remember most was camping out on the beach beneath the walls of this mighty sentinel.” [^4]
The “mighty sentinel’s walls,” photo by John Meader.
1935 color postcard of Fort Popham. Courtesy of Maine Memory Network.
2020 photo of Fort Popham by John Meader.
I arrive early at the Phippsburg Historical Society. Merry Chapin meets me at the door and leads me past curated displays into an adjoining archive with a large workspace. The society’s volunteers, such as Merry and her husband Craig, spend hours here preserving local culture and history. We’re all socially distancing, masked, and getting to know each other when John arrives.
Photos courtesy of John Meader.
“9:00 a.m. I enter the Phippsburg Historical Society building where I find my collaborator Cathy Jewitt chatting with Merry and Craig. They introduced me to Tommy Totman—a local gentleman with deep roots and love for the history of Phippsburg and Popham. Our hour-long meeting lasts until 12:30, a delightful time spent bringing memories from this coastal peninsula to life as only a gifted storyteller can do.
- John
Tommy remembers building his own bicycles with parts salvaged from trips to the dump. He recalls that Atkins Bay in front of the Fort was great for digging clams, whether or not one had a license. A bedsheet, quickly hung by a lookout on the back of the Fort wall, let the clammers know when the warden was on his way, giving the diggers time to escape to Cox’s Cove. He and his friends routinely brought their guns and dogs to school, because naturally one hunted on the way home.
Students at Popham School, 1900. Courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum.
He’ll never forget an unusually large 4th of July explosion.
“That was 4th of July week-end. No it wasn’t on a week-end, I think it was during the week, and being young adventurous young boys, we had fire—legally it was all right to run fireworks at that time. And at the Center Store, Bisson’s Store now, we were up there—because you could buy fireworks from them—even the kids could buy fireworks. And looking around, we we found that across the street where there was an old store—they used to have a gas station there, too—they cut the pipes off just above the ground, ‘cause they closed the store. And we found out if you dropped a firecracker down one of those pipes, there was like a subtle … boom. And that was very enticing to young kids. So we dropped another one down, and then nothing happened. Now, like they say, the third one never fails.
When we were all standing around the pipe, and we dropped a firecracker down—and this time there was a boom. It was big boom. It was a great big boom! Both ends of the tank blew out and it threw dirt into the air about 40 or 50 feet. And a guy was coming down the road, a guy from West Point, and he had just got back from Korea. And he said he thought he was back in Korea, with the dirt that was going in the air sounded like a bomb to him. And luckily—where we were all standing around the pipe—and both ends blew out—we didn’t get blown anywhere; except one guy got blown up against the building a little bit, and covered with dirt, and the dirt covered him first, and then a big rock rolled on him on top of the dirt, which didn’t hurt him a bit, and took a couple of men to lift the rock off—and I can remember running home knowing we were in deep trouble.
But as it turns out the law is that all pipes must be [cut] at least 12 feet above the ground. And I can remember the sheriff coming to my father’s house, and the sheriff and my father were good friends, and my father said, “Well, I know the boys are in trouble,” ‘cause my brother John went there too. And Loring Small was the sheriff, and he said, “Tom,” he said, “You don’t have to worry about anything. I’m here to find out if you want to sue.” And my father said, “What do you mean, sue? My boys did it.” And he said, “Well, the law says,” and he explained what the law was. And my father said, “Nobody got hurt, so, let’s just let it go.” So that was the story about the 4th of July boom. Today, you’d sue at the drop of a hat today. […]We learned a lesson. We were all over in the corner crying because we thought we were going to get taken to jail knowing that we’d done something wrong. And as it turned out, it turned out a little bit different.”
- Tommy
Phippsburg historian Thomas C. “Tommy” Totman shares his stories with the authors. Here’s a link to the whole interview. Photo by John Meader.
Tommy’s stories about ice harvesting, his grandfather’s simultaneously running two late-19th century Gilded Age hotels (the Rockledge and the Riverside, where, on one of the “Popham Days,” the Riverside was prepared to feed 1,000 guests), and the history of a Popham cannon especially important to his family, kept us enthralled.
Vintage Popham postcards and photos. Courtesy of Phippsburg Historical Society and Thomas C. Totman.
The Popham canon, then and now, and the legacy of many shipwrecks led to the lifesaving station that still stands. Canon postcard courtesy of Phippsburg Historical Society, shipwreck photo courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum, modern photography by John Meader.
Early brochure promoting Popham Beach as a destination. Courtesy of Phippsburg Historical Society.
Before John and I leave, he takes photos of Cyrus Longley’s Civil War-era watercolors of the construction of Fort Popham. Longley completed his series when garrisoned at the Fort in 1864 as a member of the Unassigned Company of Maine Infantry. [^5]
One of Cyrus Longley’s watercolor panels, photo by John Meader. Courtesy of the Phippsburg Historical Society.
With history fresh in our minds, we return to the Fort to find the spot where Gus had stood to take the photo for his postcard (#86), which shows the southern face of the fort.
Gus’s postcard of Fort Popham from the beach path. This path was originally the road between the fort and the beach. Courtesy of Penobscot Marine Museum.
John:
“Gus took a postcard of Fort Popham from the perspective of the path that leads to the beach. Wanting to recreate the image as closely as I could nearly fifty years after Gus took his picture should be easy. The path is still there. There are three telephone poles in the image; they’re still there. There’s a path coming in from the left, and it’s still there. I hold the postcard in my hand and move around trying to find the spot. I get really close, but the two telephone poles on the left side are not quite right. I get close to Gus’s spot and snap the shot. It’s still not exact.
Where was he standing?
Cathy and I walk further down the path, and there’s a big ledge on the right that I hadn’t noticed earlier. It’s almost hidden behind some trees. Maybe that’s where he was standing? I scramble up the ledge, climbing until I’m about 10 feet above the path. What I can see through the copse of trees are the three telephone poles and they are in the exact orientation! The intersection in the path is just where it should be, but the shot is no longer possible because of the trees! I guess things change, trees grow and views get obscured. With the postcard in hand, from what I can see, I am standing in the exact spot where Gus stood over 50 years ago. For a second time today, I connect with Gus and smile.”
- John
Fort Popham’s spiral steps and arched passageways invite exploration up and down and through. The past is accessible here, and indeed, the 1970 brochure got it right: “To pay a personal visit to an historic shrine is to receive a concept such as no book can supply.” Tracing Gus’s footsteps turned out to be a great adventure.
Photo and postcard collage: Popham photos courtesy of John Meader. Boston Boat Postcard courtesy of Earl Brechlin [^6].
Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec postcard courtesy of Thomas C. Totman.
Special thanks:
The Penobscot Marine Museum and Photo Archivist Kevin Johnson for image use, preserving the Phillips Collection, and continued support; Phippsburg Historical Society for research and image use; Thomas C. Totman for sharing memories and anecdotes; Merry and Craig Chapin for research assistance; Mary Jane Phillips Smith, Gus’s daughter, for sharing family history and continued support; Rhumb Line Maps for technical support and hosting; and John Meader for his photography.
Partners for the Postcards from Gus blog:
Sources, further reading, and more of Tommy’s stories:
1. Fort classification information:
Thomas C. Totman, Historian, conversation with Cathy Jewitt and John Meader, Nov. 5, 2020, in person.
2. Maine Vacation Planner, 1970:
Maine Department of Economic Development, "Historic Me. The Great State of Maine Historic Sites" (1970). Economic and Community Development Documents. 69, accessed September 10, 2020.
3. Augustus Phillips, postcard business:
Augustus Phillips, handwritten notebook entries, collection of author Cathy Jewitt.
4. Morgan’s canoe trip:
William Morgan, “Around New England: Fort Popham, a Sentinel of History and Memories,” Design New England Magazine, accessed September 1, 2020.
5. Phippsburg and Fort Popham, history and stories:
Merry Chapin, President, Phippsburg Historical Society, conversations and research with Cathy Jewitt and John Meader, October 2, 2020 and Nov. 5, 2020, in person.
Craig Chapin, Director, Phippsburg Historical Society, conversations and research with Cathy Jewitt and John Meader, October 2, 2020,and Nov. 5, 2020, in person.
Thomas C. Totman, Historian, Phippsburg Historical Society, historical anecdotes, documents, and lively tales with Cathy Jewitt and John Meader, October 2, 2020, and Nov. 5, 2020, in person. Listen to more of Tommy’s Popham stories: link to audio
6. Vintage postcards:
Earl Brechlin, Bygone Coastal Maine: A Postcard Tour From Kittery to Camden (Down East Books, Camden, Maine, 2004), #71.