https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/desert-of-maine-archaeology * Want to see fewer ads? Become a Member. * Trips + Upcoming Trips + All Trips Trips Blog [bmc] Get the Atlas Obscura book Shop Now >> Upcoming Trips View All Trips >> [blank-11b9] Vietnam: A Culinary Adventure from Hanoi to Saigon Great Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza In the Footsteps of Pharaohs: Exploring Ancient Egypt [blank-11b9] Iceland in Winter: Natural Wonders & Ancient Legends Puerto Varas Chiloe & the Fjords of Northern Patagonia * Experiences Upcoming Experiences View All Experiences >> [blank-11b9] Members only Learning the Language of Art w/ Art Muse L.A.: Contemporary Art [blank-11b9] Members only Monster of the Month w/ Colin Dickey: Krampus [blank-11b9] Members only Antiques and Their Afterlives: Anatomical Wax Figures [blank-11b9] Washington The Spies of Georgetown [blank-11b9] Washington The Spies of Embassy Row * Courses Upcoming Courses View All Courses >> [blank-11b9] Historical Nonfiction: Research-Based Writing With Hadley Meares [blank-11b9] Making Scents: Experimental Perfumery With Saskia Wilson-Brown [blank-11b9] Bee-licious: Taste Honey Like a Sommelier With Marina Marchese [blank-11b9] Making Upcycled Travel Journals With Bel Mills [blank-11b9] Demystifying Artisanal Cheese With Jasper Hill Farm * Places + Top Destinations + Latest Places + Most Popular Places + Random Place + Lists + Itineraries + ------------------------------------------------------------- Add a Place ------------------------------------------------------------- + Download the App Latest Places View All Places >> "Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. Bellaire, Texas 'Move One Place On' 29.7062, -95.4497 Rohwer Heritage Site sign Tillar, Arkansas Rohwer Heritage Site 33.7664, -91.2803 Peter the Anteater Irvine, California Peter the Anteater Statue 33.6492, -117.8495 Bullet hole in the decorative panel on the external door. Helsinki, Finland Bullet Holes in the National Museum of Finland 60.1750, 24.9316 Top Destinations View All Destinations >> Countries + Australia + Canada + China + France + Germany + India + Italy + Japan Cities + Amsterdam + Barcelona + Beijing + Berlin + Boston + Budapest + Chicago + London + Los Angeles + Mexico City + Montreal + Moscow + New Orleans + New York City + Paris + Philadelphia + Rome + San Francisco + Seattle + Stockholm + Tokyo + Toronto + Vienna + Washington, D.C. * Foods Latest Places to Eat & Drink View All Places to Eat >> A live, natural spring is the centerpiece of the restaurant's dining room. The Grotto Wood-Fire Grill A surf mural in the interior of Dogtown Coffee. Dogtown Coffee The exterior of La Oruga. Restaurante La Oruga Inside the winery Finca Descalzos Viejos Denby Dale's 1964 pie Denby Dale Pie Tin * Stories + Recent Stories + All Stories + Puzzles + Video + Podcast Most Recent Stories View All Stories >> At 10-times magnification, sand from Alaska's Point Spencer resembles semiprecious stones. These Tiny Jewels Come From One of Alaska's Most Unusual Beaches [blank-11b9] Podcast: Trailing of the Sheep Sponsored by GoUSA TV In 2022, lettuce bested the prime minister in a contest of endurance. Why Do We Roast Politicians With Food-Based Insults? [blank-11b9] Podcast: African Heritage House * Sign In Join * Sign In ----------------------------------------------------------------- Join * What's near me? Random Place The Art of Digging a Buried Building Out of Maine's Desert Dunes The Spring House had been hidden for decades. by Jessica Leigh Hester October 8, 2020 The Art of Digging a Buried Building Out of Maine's Desert Dunes Copy Link Facebook Twitter Reddit Flipboard Pocket 1960s-era photos show the structure being swallowed by dunes. 1960s-era photos show the structure being swallowed by dunes. Courtesy Mela Heestand In This Story [blank-11b9] Destination Guide Freeport, Maine 1 Articles 2 Places On a dry day in the middle of September, Josh Smith started digging. Sometimes, the three-person crew used a track excavator; other times, they wielded shovels. They dug all day, then a few more. They removed shovelfuls of fine sand so that their hole would have gently sloping sides, like an amphitheater or a bowl. They knew that if they dug straight down, the walls could collapse in on them. The town of Freeport, Maine, is known for outlet malls that include a 24-hour L. L. Bean. But beyond its cathedral of rubber-soled boots, Freeport is also known for its "desert," a vast dunescape flanked by evergreens and other trees. It's a popular tourist spot, sometimes depicted as New England's Sahara and presided over by fake, sleepy-looking camels. That's where Smith and his fellow shovelers carried out their work. Smith has a background in paleontology, and is no stranger to digging. Mela and Doug Heestand, the current owners of the sprawling Desert of Maine, had tapped him to help unearth an old structure that once dispensed water from a nearby spring--a relic that hadn't seen daylight in decades. One shovelful at a time, it started to come into view. A sign still testified to the existence of a spring house, somewhere under there.A sign still testified to the existence of a spring house, somewhere under there. Courtesy Josh Smith --------------------------------------------------------------------- A desert in New England might sound like a gimmick, the kind of thing that P.T. Barnum would dream up with truckloads of sediment under the cover of night. Though the swath isn't a desert in the geological sense--the Freeport area sees around 52 inches of rain and 71 inches of snow every year, according to the National Weather Service, and truly arid regions get much less than that--it's not a hoax, either. The sediment didn't arrive there by human hands. According to the Maine Geological Survey, the sand appeared at the end of the last Ice Age. Wind barreled across the landscape from the coast, sand and silt in tow. The breeze dropped these sediments on land newly exposed by the receding ice sheet. In many cases, it was eventually hidden by plants, which helped fasten it in place. But when farmers settled the land, grazing animals exposed the sand. That's when humans started seeing dollar signs. "Nature laid it down, human error uncovered it, and the hucksters and gawkers arrived late in the game," The New York Times reported in 2006, with a hint of snark. Mela Heestand, one of the current co-owners, has waded into archives and tax records to learn about the farmers who once owned the land, she explained to the local Forecaster newspaper. After that, nature-loving small business owners took over, and by 1925 it was a tourist site, the Forecaster reports. Soon, a pleasantly cold groundwater spring was discovered on the property. One 1930s visitor said it "burst forth out of one of the many mountains of powdered sand." This old photo shows the structure in its heydey. This old photo shows the structure in its heydey. Courtesy Mela Heestand At some point in the late 1930s, the then-owners of the property built a gazebo-like structure around the well-head. "For a time, visitors could go over and get a drink of water from the groundwater spring," Smith says. And though he hasn't seen any historic advertisements, he adds, "I would be strongly surprised if they weren't advertising healing properties or something." Trouble is, dunes are always on the move. The dunes at the Desert of Maine are said to have swallowed entire trees: One visitor, recounting a 1936 ramble for a New Jersey newspaper, recalled standing on dunes that had recently overtaken an apple tree, whose branches still seemed alive and jutted out through the blanket of sand. "That's what sand dunes do, migrate from place to place," Smith says. And the dunes marched right over the gazebo. Smith says the gazebo structure, known as the Spring House, was likely inundated soon after it was completed. The owners didn't try to stave off the encroaching dunes, he adds, but they did give visitors a heads-up. Sometime after World War II, they installed a sign that, in Smith's words, said something like, "Hey, shifting sands are burying the spring house; this is unstable--stay the heck away." By the 1960s, Smith goes on, the structure vanished beneath the dunes, and the owners installed a sign to mark its former location. "Because of the sign, we knew it was there," Smith adds. "It wasn't lost to history and didn't just disappear into legend." --------------------------------------------------------------------- When excavating in fine sediment, archaeologists cross their fingers for calm skies. "Wind will always be the enemy," Smith says. "It will pull sand into the happy little hole you're excavating." On a windy day, Smith says, it's not worth even trying to dig. "There's no point. Might as well just go have a coffee." Once the heaving got underway on some of the 23 acres of exposed sand, "all we really did was shovel all bloody day long," Smith says. They sometimes needed to strategically collapse a portion of the hole they had just dug, to prevent more from caving in on them. The digging kept going and going and going.The digging kept going and going and going. Courtesy Josh Smith They also migrated the operation 10 or 15 feet from where they began, because that's where they came across some particularly promising artifacts--rafters that they believe once propped up the roof. "We had someone with ground-penetrating radar come out to find it, and also an old-timer who remembered where it was in the 1960s--he is the son of the man who bought the property in the 1920s--and he was actually closer to being right," Mela Heestand says. Smith estimates that at least 15 feet of sand have built up on top of the structure since the 1960s, and the team is still in the early stages of removing them. "We really just found the top of the roof," Heestand says. As Maine's famously fierce winter approaches, the crew plans to undo some of their work by covering what they have revealed with a few inches of sand, as though they were tucking the structure beneath a blanket. After the last snow and frost, they will pick the work up again. While digging, the crew came across an old teal sign warning visitors to stay away from the structure, made unsound by the onslaught of sand.While digging, the crew came across an old teal sign warning visitors to stay away from the structure, made unsound by the onslaught of sand. Courtesy Josh Smith When the excavation is complete, the owners hope to build an exhibit around the structure. They will likely preserve the sign with some sort of varnish that seals it against the elements. Walking down a ramp, visitors will encounter the heap of sand hauled from the hole, next to a cross-section of a dune, showing how the sand changed over millennia. (The oldest layer is bluish gray, Heestand says, and was once covered by an ancient, salty sea.) At the end of the ramp, after passing some signage, visitors will glimpse (but not enter) the Spring House. "The wood is fragile and experienced a lot of rot from being under wet sand for so long," Heestand says. The owners plan to enlist a paleontologist to wire the structure together and hold it steady. Heestand says they'll also need a retaining wall to hold some of the sand back. Short of building a gigantic new structure over the exposed site, though, there aren't many permanent ways to fend it off. "I think they're going to have to employ tactful use of leaf blowers fairly continuously," Smith says. The dunes, meanwhile, will keep on trucking. Crawling southwest at about one foot annually, quipped writer Clif Garboden in The Boston Globe, the dunes should land on the doorstep of the Calvin Klein outlet in about 11,200 years. Read next The Microscopic Majesty of Sugars, Salts, and Spices A molecular biologist turned food writer put kitchen staples under the microscope. [blank-11b9] tourismbuildingsdesertsarchaeologyhistory Want to see fewer ads? Become a Member. Want to see fewer ads? Become a Member. Using an ad blocker? We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world's hidden wonders. Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month. Continue Using Ad-Block Support Us Keep Exploring [blank-11b9] exploration Podcast: Discovery Hut Join us for a daily celebration of the world's most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places. The Podcast Team August 24, 2022 [blank-11b9] desert art The 6,000-Year Story of the Negev Desert Is Etched in Stone Millennia of rock art offer a library of human history in the Levant. Gitit Ginat July 18, 2022 [blank-11b9] islands Excavating the Hawaiian History of Kaua'i's 'Russian' Fort A rich local history has long been overshadowed by a few months under a Russian flag. Sarah Durn November 30, 2021 [blank-11b9] plague Venice Is Almost One Big Plague Graveyard A city built on water was always going to struggle with burials--especially when a deadly pandemic came to town. Vittoria Traverso October 27, 2022 [Z29ndWUgMD] Video * AO Docs The Muslims Preserving Kolkata's Last Jewish Synagogues 4:08 [aWxsIDAyLm] Video How One Man Built a Sprawling Treehouse With a Dance Floor 6:55 [LmpwZw] Video Inside a Domed Pyramid With Astounding Acoustics and a History of Miracles 4:16 [MDEuanBn] Video * Wonder From Home Show & Tell With a Pull-Tab Archaeologist 10:07 [NC5qcGc] Video * PinDrop An Ancient Cemetery, Resurrected 1:51 [bGwwMTIuan] Video Inside Ohio's Experimental Archaeology Lab 7:29 [aWlTdGlsbC] Video * AO Docs Hawai`i's Native-Language Newspaper Archive 3:35 Sponsored by Olukai [cmNoMDIuan] Video * AO Docs 'Discovering' Mexico's Monarch Butterfly Migration 6:46 [dXJlcyAwMy] Video * Object of Intrigue The Real Story Behind George Washington's Dentures 3:30 [anBn] Video * Object of Intrigue Behold, the Vampire-Killing Kit 4:19 [cGc] Video See the Mysterious Horned Helmet of Henry VIII 4:00 Want to see fewer ads? Become a Member. From Around the Web THE GASTRO OBSCURA BOOK Taste the World! An eye-opening journey through the history, culture, and places of the culinary world. Order Now Gastro Obscura Book [] See Fewer Ads Become an Atlas Obscura member and experience far fewer ads and no pop-ups. Learn More Get Our Email Newsletter [ ] Thanks for subscribing! View all newsletters >> [Submit] Follow Us * * * * * * Get the app Download on the Apple App Store Get it on Google Play Download the App Places * All Places * Latest Places * Most Popular * Places to Eat * Random * Nearby * Add a Place Editorial * Stories * Food & Drink * Itineraries * Lists * Puzzles * Video * Podcast * Newsletters Trips * All Trips * Trips Blog * Art & Culture Trips * Food Trips * Hidden City Trips * History Trips * Photography Trips * Wildlife & Nature Trips * FAQ Experiences * Experiences * Online Courses * Online Experience FAQ * Online Course FAQ Community * Membership * Feedback & Ideas * Community Guidelines * Product Blog * Unique Gifts * Work With Us Company * About * Contact Us * FAQ * Advertise With Us * Advertising Guidelines * Press * Privacy Policy * Cookie Policy * Terms of Use (c) 2022 Atlas Obscura. All rights reserved. Questions or Feedback? Contact Us Thanks for sharing! Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Want a Free Book? Sign up for our newsletter and enter to win the second edition of our book, Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders. [ ] Subscribe No Thanks Visit AtlasObscura.com Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders Stay in Touch! Follow us on social media to add even more wonder to your day. Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Follow Us on Instagram No Thanks Visit AtlasObscura.com No purchase necessary. Winner will be selected at random on 12/01/ 2022. Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). Offer subject to change without notice. See contest rules for full details. Add Some Wonder to Your Inbox Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. [ ] Subscribe No Thanks We'd Like You to Like Us Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. No Thanks [p] Quantcast