Two of my favorite places to wander offshore at the Kennebunks are Strawberry Island at Kennebunk Beach and Vaughn’s Island at Cape Porpoise. Both are now held in trust; Strawberry Island by the Kennebunk Land Trust and Vaughn’s Island by the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust. Both islands were also once privately owned by Arthur Guy Carlton Libby and his much younger wife Elsie Klingman Libby of Libby’s Colonial Tea Room of Wells, fame.

Seth Warren, who had had a house on Vaughn’s Island for many years, sold the island to a development company in 1888 for $3,000. Plan 3 -22 was drawn up for 143 cottage lots. By 1891, three cottages had been built as well as a wooden drawbridge to the island from Schmidt’s Fish House. Thank goodness the development was a failure. Eventually, mother nature took back the cottages, the roads, and the bridge.

Arthur Libby bought Vaughn’s Island in 1930. He had always wanted to own it and regretted not having bought it 40 years earlier. By 1930 Strawberry Island, which he had purchased in the 1890s, was known as Libby’s Folly because so much of the land had eroded away, including an elegant house Arthur had started to build there. Only a stable later fitted up as a cottage and a few other outbuildings remained.

Arthur died in 1942. His wife Elsie inherited Vaughn’s Island and kept it until 1968 when she finally accepted Jon Milligan’s offer to buy it for a new development for $40,000.

Local men, Alexander Brook, Alexander Armentrout, and Sterling Dow III hastily formed the Vaughn’s Island Preservation Trust to save the island from the proposed development. They offered Elsie a higher price plus money with which to compensate the disappointed developer if she would sell it to them instead. She did. The Vaughn’s Island Preservation Trust raised the required $90,000 with the help of the Nature Conservancy of the Pine Tree State. Ownership transferred to the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust in 1982.

The Schooner Mildred V. Nunan was wrecked at Vaughn’s Island #kennebunkport in 1912. Join me for Shipwrecks of the Kennebunks slideshow tonight at the Town House School.