QUICK TRAIL FACTS
- Preserve Size: 57 acres
- Trail Mileage: ~1.4 miles in trail system
- Pets: yes
- Difficulty: easy
- Sights: Frances Perkins homestead and exhibit, Damariscotta River, fields
This extraordinary property, which consists of a stately 1837 brick house and a saltwater farm on the Damariscotta River, belonged to the family of Frances Perkins, a Maine woman who helped elevate the quality of every individual’s life in the United States. As secretary of labor for Franklin Roosevelt from 1933-1954, she was the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary. More importantly, she spearheaded the implementation of many visionary reforms for labor rights, including a five-day workweek, Social Security, and laws protecting child workers, ensuring they went to school instead of to factories. In fact, she told Roosevelt she’d only serve if she could pursue a set of priorities that included the above policies, as well as unemployment and worker’s compensation, a minimum wage, and universal health insurance. (That last goal seems to be the only thing she didn’t accomplish!)
You can check out a small exhibit of her life in the barn, for free. Eventually, the brick farmhouse will reopen to the public as well.
Visitors are also invited to walk the well-tended trails on the farm’s 57 acres, which are open from dawn to dusk. The trails start behind the barn, where you’ll see a trailhead kiosk with a map. You can do a roughly 1.4-mile loop that brings you to the banks of the river, passing through fields and forest and alongside old stone walls. It’s about 0.7 miles from the barn to the point, down a gentle descent. The trails are mostly wide and level, like carriage paths, except for the final narrower path that brings you to a pretty spot on the river with views of the town of Damariscotta. The paths through the fields are mown. The map notes three historic points on the trail system, but these weren’t marked with any sign on our visit and were a bit easy to miss! But it is easy to see broken up bricks on the point, remnants of Perkins’ family’s brick-making business.
Currently, the Frances Perkins Center is a National Historic Landmark, but very soon (as of Aug. 20, I was told), it could become a national monument, run by the National Park Service.
Directions: The Center, based in Frances Perkins’ brick house and barn, is located at 478 River Road in
Newcastle, about 1.8 miles from the intersection with Route 1.
