Hog Island, Maine
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Hog Island, Maine (Muscongus Bay]
Currently the site of the Hog Island Audubon Center operated by Maine Audubon, this Hog Island is located in Bremen, Maine at the end of Keene Neck. It has an agricultural history like most, if not all, other Hog Islands. In the late nineteenth century it was summer home to The Point Breeze Inn and Bungalows, a recreational settlement. By 1910, Hog Island became a project of Mabel Loomis Todd, original editor of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Todd purchased tracts of the island to save its timber from clearcutting. Together with her husband, David Peck Todd (head astronomer at Amherst College), they built a rustic summer camp there that was occupied by family members and their friends into the 1960s.
The only Todd child, daughter Millicent Todd Bingham, negotiated with John Baker of the National Audubon Society to have a nature study facility established on the island at the more developed Point Breeze site. The Audubon Nature Camp opened in the summer of 1936. The staff included Roger Tory Peterson, noted author of the new Peterson Field Guide Series and director Carl W. Buchheister, who would go on to serve as president of The National Audubon Society from 1959-1967.
The Hog Island Audubon Center currently hosts a variety of summer workshops and other gatherings.
