Along the wooded eastern shore of Verona Island, near the mouth of the Penobscot River, the Joost Preserve protects 25 acres of coastal forest and field.
Acquired in 2022 by Orland-based Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust, the preserve encompasses about a mile of winding footpaths through a forest and meadow and offers close-up views of the river’s eastern channel.
Its least visible and most surprising feature is a secluded, paddle-in campsite situated on a low bluff above the water, complete with a few level tenting spots, a big picnic table and a temporary privy.
It may look like an ordinary campsite, but during a recent visit, Swanville resident Cloe Chunn said it is “the golden spike,” connecting 10 more riverfront campsites along the 100-mile stretch of the Penobscot River below Medway to more than 200 island campsites maintained along the length of the Maine coast by the Maine Island Trail Association.
Chunn and her husband, David Thanhauser, are co-founders of the Penobscot River Paddling Trail, established in 2016 to encourage multi-day adventures along one of Maine’s most storied waterways. The effort grew out of the couple’s experience while paddling the length of the river that year, when they found no sanctioned campsites and resorted to “stealth camping.”
“We paddled the river from Medway to Bucksport and home to Belfast harbor,” Chunn said. “That trip inspired our dream of a series of campsites to enhance the trip and make it possible for more people to experience the grandeur and wildness of the Penobscot.”
The Penobscot River Paddling Trail starts at the family-owned Pine Grove Campground and Cottages, about four miles upstream of the public boat launch in Medway, where the east and west branches of the river flow together.
Paddlers headed downstream can rely on finding a free, safe, legal campsite on private land roughly every 10 miles, culminating at the new Verona Island site. From there, they can paddle into Penobscot Bay to connect with the Maine Island Trail at Ram Island, just off Castine near the Holbrook Island Sanctuary.
Brian Marcaurelle, program director at Maine Island Trail Association, said the organization has been in talks with Chunn and the paddling trail group for a few years, trying to establish a “missing link” campsite to connect the two trail systems.
Maine Island Trail maintains island and shoreline campsites from Eastport to Kittery, most within a day’s paddle of at least one other site. In 2023, more than 7,400 campers accessed these sites, about half arriving via sea kayak and the rest by sailboat or motorboat.
“The two trails come together right around Bucksport,” Marcaurelle said, but early discussions about establishing a linking campsite on town-owned Porcupine Island fizzled. So when Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust acquired the Joost parcel and started exploring developing a campsite there, “all signs pointed to ‘Go,’” Marcaurelle said.
Although it would be modeled on the paddling trail’s other campsites, the groups decided together the details of locating the takeout, a stairway from the landing to the camping area, a temporary privy and other details. Then in July, the groups came together again for a workday to make the site a reality.
At Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust, Executive Director Landon Fake said the new campsite fits neatly into the organization’s goals for managing the larger Joost Preserve.
He noted that Verona Island has long played an important role in the history and culture of the Penobscot Nation, including seasonal access to runs of diadromous fish, such as shad and alewives. More recently, the island has been used for farming and shipbuilding, and the Joost Preserve encompasses the site of an old shipyard as well as former farm fields.
The Joost Preserve’s relatively small size and location near residential midcoast communities, and its ready access from coastal Route 1, make it an especially attractive choice for developing future recreational elements, including handicapped-accessible pathways, a vault toilet, picnic areas, a covered pavilion for group activities and other park-like amenities, Fake said.
Funding for developing and maintaining the preserve, including the paddling trails campsite, is included in an approximately $1.2 million grant to Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust from the Greenfield Environmental Trust Group, appointed in 2022 to manage funds for the multimillion dollar cleanup of mercury contamination in the Penobscot River.
In addition to at least $187 million for actual remediation, including dredging and capping contaminated sediments on the river bottom, the settlement provides approximately $20 million to help communities develop “tangible environmental and public benefits.”
Cloe Chunn stresses that the campsites established by the Penobscot River Paddling Trail rely on goodwill, responsible use and a handshake agreement with private landowners. All sites prohibit open fires. Each site has an approved outhouse or vault toilet placed by a licensed soil scientist to prevent contamination of sensitive ecosystems.
And the riverfront sites are designed to be difficult or impossible to access by land, in order to minimize the likelihood of rowdy parties, vandalism or other abuse. So far, that hasn’t been a problem along the Penobscot River Paddling Trail, she said.
Marcaurelle said misuse of the saltwater sites has been rare.
“One of our goals has been to teach the values of Leave No Trace and individual stewardship,” he said. “That means, if you come to a place where someone has left a mess, you clean it up and leave it better than you found it. People understand that if you misuse or mistreat these sites, they will go away.”
