Seawall Opens!

Yankee know-how opens the road now

Jul 26, 2024

SOUTHWEST HARBOR—The Seawall Road opened this afternoon after six contractors volunteered to create a temporary fix for the Mount Desert Island road that had been devastated by winter storm surge and closed for months.

On the Southwest Harbor side closest to Seawall Hotel, a Southwest Harbor police officer dismantled the “road closed” sign.

“When’s it opening?” Mount Desert Island residents asked.

“Can we go through?” tourists asked.

“Not yet,” said resident and business owner Charlotte Gill as she explained how the road has been closed for months because of sea surge during winter storms.

At about fifteen minutes before five p.m., “not yet” became “okay, now” right after Colton Sanborn of John Goodwin Jr. Construction and others helped remove the signs, the barricade, and put up a quick yellow caution tape as a makeshift ceremonial ribbon cutting.

“I am so excited!” Gill said from her perch in a golf cart.

She wasn’t the only one.

Car after car traversed the road, many coming from the Bass Harbor side following South West Harbor Station’s Engine 113 in a makeshift parade across the area.

July 24, 2024—A construction worker drives a grader along the shoulder of Seawall Road on Mount Desert Island on Wednesday. Local companies are working to repair the road, which has been closed since it was damaged in storms last winter, so it can reopen for the rest of the island's busy tourist season. Credit: Linda Coan O'Kresik / BDN

“People are very excited that we’re going to have Seawall back. It’s a very special place especially for those on this side of the island,” Mary-Ellen Reed Martel said.

Even in bad weather, people know they can grab a sandwich on their lunch break, head to Seawall, watch the waves and have a moment with the ocean.

Thanks to those six companies—John W. Goodwin, Jr., BFP Trucking & Construction, Doug Gott & Sons, GT Outhouses, Ring’s Paving Co., and Northeast Paving—people can do that again.

The popular road is a place for both locals and visitors to admire the saltwater pond, ocean views, and stone beach. It connects Southwest Harbor to Seawall Campground and Bass Harbor Head Light Station. The lack of the more direct road has increased times for emergency responses to those areas and for people to get to the attractions. Instead they must reroute multiple miles through Bass Harbor on a road which has also been under construction due to a Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) project.

This month, the MaineDOT committed to beginning its own permanent repair to the road next spring. That decision came though the department believes the road will continue to be damaged by sea surge and higher sea levels. The hope is that the repairs will increase the road’s fortitude.

Last week, six businesses—some of them direct competitors—promised the community that they’d work together next week to fix the storm-broken Seawall Road.

The MaineDOT gave the go-ahead for the contractors to make a temporary fix this summer. The Southwest Harbor Select Board quickly gave that permission, too, on July 16. That fix allows two-lane traffic.

Southwest Harbor, Tremont, and Swan’s Island residents and officials have been asking officials to make the road’s repair a priority. This week, a grassroots movement of residents has been feeding the workers to show their appreciation.