Every summer, tourists and locals alike frequent the beaches of Ogunquit and Wells in pursuit of tan lines, fun times, and long lasting memories. Anyone familiar with the area knows well how busy the two beaches become on hot days when parking spots are hard to come by and people are forced to pack on top of each other like sardines. In the middle of these two beaches, however, lies a vast strip of sand that has houses directly bordering it with very few beach-goers compared to the rest of the area. An observer of the situation might wonder why instead of packing together so closely on the two beaches surrounding it, the people at the beach don’t just spread out to the sparsely populated section. Moody Beach-the term used to refer to this area of land-was ruled to be private in 1989 by the Maine Supreme Court. Legally, only a resident in one of the beachfront homes is granted access which the “Free Moody Beach” movement has been trying to do away with. In support of the abolition of this law, Wheels N Waves presents an interview with Jeannie Connermey, a spokesperson for the group leading the charge.
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“So thank you very much for being here. Obviously we talked a little bit about this yesterday, but you know, can you kind of walk me through how you got started in this movement?”
My family has been coming to Moody Beach for about 53 years, so I started when I was very young. We rented a cottage for several years, and then my father bought a small cottage in a back lot from Moody Beach. And when we were little, we used Moody Beach without restraint. We went there, we played games, we threw frisbees, we went in the water. We were able to set up chairs anywhere we wanted on the beach. None of the beachfront owners ever bothered us at all. It was a community. We had friends who had beachfront cottages. Everybody got together and played games together on the beach. Then come 1989.
“What happened in 1989?”
There was something called the Bell Case, which started in 1984. A man named Bell, who owned an oceanfront cottage, noticed that people were sitting in front of his cottage on the beach, sometimes making a lot of noise at night, and he called the Wells police and said, “Please come and ask these people to leave.” The Wells police said, “No, it’s a private beach. We’re not coming.” So Mr. Bell said, “In that case, I’m taking it to court. I don’t want anybody to be able to go on my beach at all.” He took it to court. Nobody thought it would win, but it did. It won in the lower court. It was then brought to the Maine Supreme Court. The Maine Supreme Court upheld that decision in 1989 and ruled that the only things the public was allowed to do on the beach were fish, fowl, and navigate, based on a 1641 Massachusetts Colonial Ordinance. But even then, things were not that bad. I think that a lot of original owners who had just always lived with everybody coming to the beach weren’t fazed. They didn’t want to kick people off the beach.
“So when did the trouble arrive? And how?”
Well eventually a lot of those houses were sold with “a private beach.” And so the new owners- a lot of whom were very, very wealthy because the property prices skyrocketed during that time- started kicking people off the beach. They started putting up signs that said, “Private beach, no trespassing, no loitering.” And since then, it’s gotten worse and worse and worse as the property prices rise even more, as a richer demographic goes in. People who live in those homes don’t want the public on the beach, which is ridiculous because it’s a mile and a quarter long strip of beach. There’s plenty of room for everybody. There’s no parking either, so it’s only the people who live locally who are able to use the beach. If you go in the restricted area, the homeowners can ask you to leave. If you don’t leave, they can call the police, the police will come, and try to get you to leave. If you refuse, you can be taken away in handcuffs and arrested.
“That sounds pretty intense.”
We’ve seen children confronted while they’re playing a game on the beach and told that they have to leave, we’ve seen the police come and ask people sunbathing at low tide to leave as well. It’s a very hostile environment. Oftentimes, especially during hot summer days on a weekend, the 45-50 feet of sand in front of the three public rights of way is packed. You can’t find a place to put your beach chair down. You can’t find a place to put your blanket down. You certainly can’t play Frisbee or beach tennis or throw a football or a beach ball or do what people do want to do at the beach. This is all while Moody beach lies almost empty. The privileged few have 99% of the beach. The public, who also bought their homes near the beach so that they could use the beach, are now, you know, stuffed together and not even allowed to do things that people normally do on a beach.
“You have deep ties to the ‘Free Moody Beach’ movement, no?”
My brother Jim actually started it close to 10 years ago. Given the location of the cottage my family bought, we have a right to use the beach. We wanted to be able to include everybody in the Wells community, who also, we believe, has a right to use a beach in their town and near them. I might add that in most states in the United States, the beach is public land. It’s considered like a public park. Everyone has a right to use the beach. The Maine laws are based on, as I said, on a Massachusetts colonial ordinance from when Maine used to be part of Massachusetts. When Maine became an independent state in 1820 , Massachusetts laws should have no longer applied, which is one of the legal arguments being used to try and stop this injustice.
“So what effect do you think this has had on the town of Wells? I mean, obviously, you kind of touched on that a little bit when you said that, you know, there’s a lot of privilege that goes into this. You’ve been involved with this situation for a while, and it sounds like you kind of have ties to the area that go pretty far back. So how have you kind of seen this area change based on this issue?”
Well, I mean, as I mentioned, the demographic really went up, especially along the ocean. The property prices rose significantly. When we first started coming here, it was working class people, right? Just regular people who wanted a cottage for their children to be able to go to the beach in the summer. Most of the cottages not on the ocean were small, one story cottages. It was just a place to sleep, eat, and shower so that you could go to the beach. Before I talk about Wells, I want to just mention one very important point. Although these beachfront homeowners claim to own the beach, they have never paid a cent in taxes on the beach. They have never paid a cent in taxes on that land. Their homes are assessed in the same way that our homes are assessed. They pay taxes the same way everybody else does, but the land in front of their houses that they consider their private beach, they have never paid anything in taxes on. Nothing.
So in any case, with the town of Wells, we have asked the town of Wells to do several things. We’ve been asking them for many years. We ask them to do what Kennebunkport did for a beach in their town called Goose Rocks Beach. Goose Rocks Beach had a similar situation with Moody Beach. The beachfront homeowners didn’t want people to use the beach. So at Goose Rocks, the town immediately helped their constituents. They looked at the original deeds of each home to find whether the original deeds said that they owned land down to the low water mark, and whether it was considered part of their land. All but one of them did not. In the original deeds, there was no evidence that any of this land was ever legally conveyed to the current homeowners. Now, what happened in Kennebunkport, as well as in Wells, is there was some trickery going on in the 1800s, where people would buy these homes, sell them with the beach, alter the deed, and somehow these got through the town. So people said, well, look, on my deed, it says, “I own the beach.” Although the original deed would say the opposite. This went to the Maine Supreme Court as well. In 2018, they determined that what matters legally is the original deed, not any subsequent deeds. There’s evidence that the same thing happened at Moody Beach and in Wells. We’ve been trying to pressure Wells for years to do what Kennebunkport did.
The second request was to broker an agreement with the beachfront homeowners. We can all use the beach. There’s plenty of room, and no need for aggression. Another thing we asked them for was to change the signs in the public rights of way, which say that on each side of the public way is a private beach-which is not accurate. You are allowed to fish, fowl and navigate. They refuse to change the signs. We held a rally, and two summers ago, we started going to town meetings, we started writing letters, and we started making noise. And we wrote an open letter to them that got some press about what we wanted them to do, including those things. After two public meetings on the issue last May and June, Wells bought a parcel of land called the Eleanor Wright Parcel, which apparently has something to do with Moody Beach, but they won’t tell us exactly what. They promised us they would broker an agreement and asked for names of those willing to be negotiators. Many members of Free Moody Beach signed up, but Wells never followed through. Neither will they tell us why they let it drop. Their promises never led to anything. What they did do is they filed an amicus brief for the statewide case, which I haven’t talked about yet, which is called the Masucci case. While all this was happening with Wells, we were connected with a lawyer named Orlando Delogu. He is a former law professor at the University of Maine, Portland, I believe. And he was very vocal that the public owns the beach in Maine and wrote a book about it, and he got a law firm by the name of Archipelago to take this case and bring it before the Maine courts. My father is also one of the plaintiffs in the case trying to get that to go through so that statewide, the public will be able to use the beach. The case is now with the Maine Supreme Court, and a decision is expected this year.
“Best of luck. That’s exciting.”
If that case loses, we have nothing. There’s no reason the beachfront homeowners will let us use the beach. Why would they? They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Right now, we have some leverage saying to the beachfront homeowners, you can lose the entire beach or you can make an agreement with us and let us use the beach except for the first 30, 40 or 50 feet abutting your seawall, you can have that, we won’t go on that, but we want to be able to throw a frisbee on the beach, like normal people do. We want to be able to use the rest of the beach, like it used to be. Again, I have been unable to get an answer as to why Wells won’t broker this conversation as they promised us. Nobody is able to get an answer from the town. When the case is decided either way, it will probably be appealed, that will be another five years at least, until another decision is made, and we’ll see how long that goes. It could be appealed again. I do believe that everybody in the state of Maine should be able to use the beach.
“So what can people like me or anyone else who’s local and interested in this issue do to assist with the Free Moody Beach movement?”
Good question. So I would say, first of all, visit our website, freemoodybeach.org. Sign up to receive emails. We have updates every so often that we send out. Another thing you can do is get a Free Moody Beach T-shirt and wear that. I encourage people to go have fun on Moody Beach; try to enjoy it. The beach should belong to all of us. If the police are called, they should give you the opportunity to leave and not be arrested. We wish the town of Wells would live up to their promises, so this would not be necessary. Or if you want to remain totally legal, go down with a fishing rod and fish in front of a cottage with a private beach sign. We’re allowed to fish, fowl and navigate. They cannot arrest you for fishing. That’s the law, as long as you have a fishing license. So, unfortunately, we have tried all the angles, we know, and I think what’s left, right? We don’t want to just sit back and be quiet and let Wells and the state of Maine and the beachfront homeowners treat us as second class citizens because we’re not fortunate enough to own an oceanfront cottage. I might also add that in the spirit of Wheels N Waves, surfers are allowed to surf in the water. People are allowed to use the water at Moody Beach. However, you are not allowed to put anything down between the water and the cottages, nor are you allowed to, like, stand there after you surf. Technically, right, Technically, I also might add, we’re not allowed to walk on the beach. The law is that walking is not allowed. Walking has always gone under the radar because everybody likes to walk the beach and it would be very difficult to patrol. But technically, you’re only allowed that patch of sand down to the water in front of that 50 feet at one of the three public rights of way. I would also encourage people to come to relevant events, like rallies and town meetings. Support it. I would encourage people to join our group and get involved. It is a small group. We need more organizers. We need people willing to do something. It’s very easy to say someone should do something about this situation, right? It’s harder to do it, and people have to get out of their comfort zone. If you want a free Moody Beach, you need to step up and act, contact us, and we’ll put something together, we’ll work together. It has to be everybody willing to step up. And I know it’s difficult. It’s outside everybody’s comfort zone. It’s outside my comfort zone. But somebody has to do it, and it might as well be us.