UNION, Maine — Unless you’re right in front of the small unsuspecting camp on Fuller’s Island in the middle of Crawford Pond, you most likely could go a whole day on the small lake without knowing it existed.
Discovering the camp’s secluded presence is surprise No. 1.
The camp, built in 1910 according to Union town records, unleashes its second surprise when you dock your boat, trudge across the island’s thick foundation of dried pine needles and step inside.
It takes a while to gather stock of the whole scene: a chalkboard sign next to the door reads “Oct. 3, 1976, Great Day!! Mom,” an array of local newspapers stacked in the corner of the camp’s large front room date back to the 1980s, and dried tea bags lay in quahog shells next to empty mugs — signs that this was most likely where a former owner spent their summer mornings.
It’s as if someone left the camp one morning with every intention to come back and just never did.
It’s an assumption the camp’s newest owners, local siblings Stephen Brooks, Mark Brooks and Julie Scaccia have held since they purchased the camp earlier this year. They’ve spent the last few months looking through a century’s worth of books, tools and other vintage items left behind.
“I wish we had more information. It would be cool to find a journal here. I was hoping we would find something like that,” Mark Brooks said. “It’s just bizarre.”
Camps in any other state might be called a lake house or a cottage, but in Maine, the term “camp” has come to mean a place owned for the purpose of getting away from the world for a moment as a summer or simply a weekend vacation spot.
The siblings have their own camps on the shores of Crawford Pond and had known the Fuller’s Island camp had been for sale for at least two years. But this spring, Stephen Brooks sought to track down the camp’s owner who was living in Utah with his family.
He wrote the former owner, Harold McComb, a handwritten letter expressing interest in purchasing the camp, not knowing if he would ever hear back. Two weeks later he received an email from McComb and realized he needed to bring his siblings on board so they could own the camp together. Within two hours of receiving the email, without ever stepping inside of the camp, the family and McComb had reached a purchase agreement.
When the family finally made it out to the camp, which is only accessible by boat, they were shocked by what they found. Aside from a tree that had done some damage to the roof, the camp was in good condition and packed with belongings of the previous tenants, who they knew very little about.
“I was kind of shocked because it was, ‘Oh my gosh, everything is still in here,’” Stephen Brooks said. “There’s still pictures, you know?”
The camp, which has no running water or electricity, hasn’t been lived in for nearly three years, but it looks like someone from a different decade could be returning home any minute because of the collection of vintage items compiled from previous inhabitants. The mint green kitchen cabinets are still filled with glassware and dishes. A medicine cabinet to the left of the sink holds first aid products long past their intended use by dates. Tucked inside one of the cabinets is a to do list, assigning different names with different tasks.
“Johnny get the water” and “Ellen cook breakfast” are mere words written in pencil, but the chart gives a glimpse into camp days that occurred decades ago.
All of the appliances including the stove and the refrigerator are gas powered, along with the ornate lamps hanging in the living room and the sole bedroom. Water for the camp has to be brought out to the island or obtained from the fresh water spring on a different island behind Fuller’s Island.
In the living room, a wooden ship figurehead that adorns the wall steals the eye. The figurehead, a woman with a bare chest and arms back, holds command over the camp. Below the figurehead, a large American flag folded and in mint condition waits to be strung up a pole or hung on a wall.
A pair of hockey skates were left out next to the couch, which, along with ice harvesting tools and a large woodstove suggest that this camp had visitors even in winter. On a table in the middle of the living room, old cameras, photos and birthday cards give a glimpse into the lives that were connected to this place.
Nearly every shelf and drawer in the camp is overflowing with every publication imaginable from nearly every decade since the early 1920s. Accompanying an impressive collection of National Geographic Magazines are Cosmopolitans from the 1950s, New Yorkers from the 1960s, Time and Life Magazines that run the entire 20th Century, and one issue of Fortune Magazine dating back to the 1930s, just to name a few.
In the back bedroom, shoes are still neatly tucked under the bed and drawers are full of extra sheets and linens. Old jackets hang from a rod in the corner and cosmetics of a different time dot the dressers below yet more archives of books and magazines.
Taken altogether, the items in the camp paint a picture of who has lived there. But the Brooks family hasn’t had much communication with the previous owner about details other than the sale of the camp. Stephen Brooks offered to let McComb take anything out of the camp that he wanted, but McComb declined.
The Bangor Daily News reached out this week to McComb, who at age 80 lives in St. George, Utah, with his sister. He confirmed he had every intention to go back to the camp one day, but one winter the snow was just too much at his home on the mainland in Union, and he took his sister up on the offer to move out west.
“Well, I’m 80 years old, and I can’t shovel snow anymore and the year I left there was 5 feet of snow, and I said, ‘That’s it,’” McComb said. “I love the weather [in Utah], but I miss that camp.”
McComb said he received the camp in the early 1970s as a gift from his friend Ellen Fuller, who built the camp and had utilized it during the summers until the 1960s. McComb, a Michigan native, came to Maine as a miner, working first in Jackman mining copper and ultimately moving to Union to mine nickel, he said.
Fuller and McComb had been close friends, and she offered to pass on the Crawford Pond camp for McComb and his wife to stay. McComb then established a home on 10 acres near Crawford Pond, religiously returning to the camp spring through fall each year — trying only a few times to stay during the winter. With the camp lacking insulation, he never stayed a full winter on the island.
“We loved the peace and quiet and tranquility,” McComb said. “The geese would nest right in the front of the camp and the loons would nest around back. We just loved that.”
Just as the Brooks intend to keep the camp relatively as is — with the vintage belongings intact — when McComb moved into the camp, he kept most of what Fuller had in it. The collection of magazines and medicines belonged to Fuller, as did the boxes of rulers and pencil sharpeners, which McComb said she had because she was a school teacher in Syracuse, New York.
With McComb not having any children, the list of chores likely belonged to Fuller and her family. However, the figurehead depicting a topless woman is an addition to the camp made by McComb after he purchased it in Texas in the mid-1970s.
Despite being from away himself, McComb said he is glad to have sold the camp to a local family, given that he had no relatives who were interested in buying the camp.
After putting on a new roof this summer, the new owners intend to work on the camp until they have to take their boats out of the water this fall so it can be ready for next summer. The family is hoping to rent out the camp to folks who will enjoy the seclusion — and who won’t mind the relics of summers’ past staying in the camp.
“I think we’re all good the way it is,” Stephen Brooks said. “Everything will be fairly similar. We just want to tidy it up and make sure everything is in good working order.”