Maine Waterfront Real Estate – The Evolution from Camps to All-Season Vacation Homes

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Maine Waterfront Real Estate – The Evolution from Camps to All-Season Vacation Homes


From the 1900s to the late 1960s Maine lakefront property owners from away chose to build camps rather than year round homes. Camps are seasonal structures constructed to be used in the “good ” weather from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
What differentiates a camp from a house is that camps lack one or more of the following attributes found in houses: a well, a foundation, central heat, insulation, and/or a proper septic system.
In the old days, folks thought it was foolish to spend a lot of money on a place one would use for 3 months a year. Back then the thought of coming up to Maine in the winter was a ridiculous notion. How come? In a word, accessibility.
From Poor Roads to Interstates
Prior to the construction of I-95 and the Maine Turnpike the journey from the Boston area to the lakes regions here in Maine wasn’t the painless 2.5 hour trip it is today. It was more like a painful 4 hour adventure. The traffic on US 1, still a 2 lane road in the 50s, backed up for miles on weekends causing cars to overheat.I can remember it like yesterday. A Saturday afternoon in mid summer 1955. My Dad’s 1951 Desoto station wagon, a handsome “woodie”, broken down along the side of the road suffering from a mysterious condition called “vapor lock”. I asked Dad “what’s vapor lock ?” and he told me that it had something to do with the carburetor. My Dad and I didn’t have much in common except for our total lack of interest in the internal combustion engine.
Greater Accessibility Leads to Winterization and Expansion
Better roads allowed lakefront homeowners easier access to their lakefront homes. Only the camps were small and were not suitable for winter use. That changed in a hurry as folks dug or drilled wells for year round water. Insulation, foundations, central heat, upgraded septics were all added to camps turning them into year round homes.
After 1970 builders stopped building the seasonal dwellings Mainers call camps. From then on, all new lakefront construction was to consist of the building of houses, not camps. This marked an end of an era. The end of the Maine Sporting camp.

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