Cushing Island, Maine
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Cushing Island is an island in Casco Bay in the U.S. state of Maine. The island is privately owned; roughly 45 families live there seasonally. Islanders know the place as "Cushing's Island." It is part of the city of Portland.
Ezekiel Cushing owned the island in the 1700s and sold it to Joshua Bangs in 1760. The island was then known as 'Bangs Island' until Lemuel Cushing bought it in 1859. Lemuel planned to turn the island into a summer resort and built the Ottawa House hotel. Lemuel's son Francis Cushing formed the Cushing's Island Company in 1883 and hired Frederick Law Olmsted the same year to develop the island as a planned 'summer colony'. Olmsted designed the landscape of the island, along with landscape architect Charles Eliot.
The first Ottawa House was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1888. The second Ottawa House burned down in 1917 and was not rebuilt.
The United States Army began acquiring land on the island in the 1890s to build Fort Levett, named for Christopher Levett, the English explorer and first settler of what is now Portland, which eventually grew to 200 acres (0.8 km²). (The island was initially known as Levett's Island, after the first English settler of Maine. Levett has been described by the eminent Maine historian James Phinney Baxter as "the first owner of the soil of Portland.") It was last used during World War II for coastal defense. That land was purchased by island residents in 1970.
Ferry service is provided by the St Croix, which departs from Long Wharf in Portland and lands at the summer dock. Access to island is for private/owners use only.
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