Star Wars first appeared in theaters that year but not in Kennebunkport. The Lyric Theater had recently been converted into shops. January 1977 was the coldest recorded January to date in the USA. There was so much snow in New England that month that the City of Boston leased a very old snow sweeper car from the Seashore Trolley Museum to help keep the subway running. By the end of January, the Kennebunks School District had already exceeded the maximum number of school cancellations allowed for the year because of snow days in January and bomb threats the previous fall.

Sandy Brook sold the York County Coast Star that year and The Bradbury brothers sold their IGA in Cape Porpoise. Tom Bradbury and Tom Murphy started their own publishing company in Kennebunkport in 1977. CIA Director, George H.W. Bush purchased his uncle’s estate at Walker’s Point.

The Kennebunkport Dump was issued a cease-and-desist burning trash order by the Environmental Protection Agency. The writing was on the wall. The Kennebunkport Dump as he knew it would come to an end within a few years but that didn’t stop Ed Mayo from publishing the Dump Watchers Handbook and Field Guide to Better Dumping in 1977. He got to express his feelings about the EPA.

What do you remember about 1977? This is what Kennebunkport looked like that year.