The bridge not built

To the editor:

I was interested to read your piece in the most recent Working Waterfront about island bridges (Long View, WWF Oct. 03). However, I want to correct your representation of the proposal to build a bridge to Chebeague Island. For several years I have been researching this effort, which is very well documented in the State Archives, the Legislative Reference Library and in files at the Chebeague Island Library and the Chebeague Historical Society. The results of my research suggest that it is risky to assume that the past was like the present. A true “long view” requires understanding of that past.

The proposal to have a bridge was initiated by the residents of Chebeague at a time, in the mid-1950s, when the island community was struggling to maintain its existence. Young people were moving away; the high school was closed by the town and students had to go to high school in Portland; banks redlined the island and the ferry service was declining into bankruptcy. Chebeague bridge supporters worked steadily for 10 years to see their dream come to fruition.

The Town of Cumberland paid for its own engineering study for a toll bridge, and the islanders asked the state legislature to authorize that the $3 million bond issue required to build it be placed on the statewide referendum ballot. The legislature had just done this for Beals Island. They pressed their case in the 1955, 1957 and 1959 legislatures, but found that they were facing the opposition of the State Highway Commission, which was one of the most powerful state agencies of that period. So in 1960 and 1962 the islanders tried to put the bond issue on the ballot directly through the initiative. They mounted petition drives in 1960 (unsuccessful) and 1962 (successful), collecting more than 86,660 signatures across the state in the process. Finally in the 1963 legislative session, when they had gathered enough signatures to put the bond issue on the ballot without the approval of the legislature, the SHC and the legislative leadership challenged the constitutionality of putting a bond issue on the referendum ballot. The Supreme Judicial Court agreed that it was unconstitutional, but the Chebeague bridge supporters fought back, finally maneuvering their bill through the legislature in the final hours of the session. So, in the end, the bridge was on the statewide referendum ballot in November 1963. The islanders were opposed in the referendum campaign by the State Highway Commission’s supporters, the Maine Good Roads Association and the bond issue went down to defeat 21,626 to 49,699.

The effort to get the bridge had broad grassroots support on the island. In the 1963 election, in record turnout on the island, 184 people voted for the bridge, 18 voted against and two didn’t vote on that issue. Over the 10-year period that the bridge was before the legislature, 56 percent of year-round and 50 percent of summer households either contributed money or worked actively for the bridge by doing things like collecting signatures on petitions and writing letters to newspapers and legislators. The bridge was supported by both fishermen and families with land-based businesses. It came at the same time as the Maine Lobstermen’s Association “tieups” and the antitrust suit against the MLA. A bridge would have made Chebeague’s lobstermen independent of the dealers in Portland. There were some people, both year-round and summer residents, who didn’t want a bridge because of the change it would bring, but they were a minority. And the people who supported the bridge would probably resent the idea that they were somehow not “true islanders.”

Chebeaguers could see that a bridge would change things on the island. Some cited the development on Cousins Island as a positive model. They did their best to prepare by developing a new zoning ordinance, surveying the condition of the roads and trying to arrange for both a town and state park on the island.

It is true that by 1970 many islanders had decided that they were better off without a bridge. But by that time the circumstances, both on the island and in the larger society, that had produced the bridge proposal had changed. For example, a new ferry service had grown up to serve Chebeague. It was much more convenient. And people were becoming aware of the environmental problems that came with cars and suburbanization. There is no interest in a bridge now, but islanders remember why they did want one in the 1950s.

Island life may be different from mainland life. A few people choose one, and many choose the other. But the implication that islanders are sort of like the 18th century’s “noble savages” who lose their virtue if they want to be part of mainstream American life, seems unfair and heedless of the sometimes-difficult reality of island life.

Elizabeth Howe

Chebeague