What Nobody Tells You About Brunswick & Harpswell, ME
Start with the thing the destinations list itself obscures: "Brunswick/Harpswell" is one entry on a map but two legally, economically, and culturally distinct towns. Brunswick (population near 23,000 and growing) is an inland-facing college and former-Navy-base town at the head of tide on the Androscoggin River. Harpswell (population near 5,100, roughly a fifth of Brunswick's size) is an island-and-peninsula town that is more than 80 percent water, built around a working lobster fleet. Treating them as interchangeable gets the story wrong in both directions -- and so does most of the shorthand people repeat about each one. Here is the fuller picture, including an unresolved contamination story, a tax rate that is not what it looks like, a state historic site still not fully open to the public, and a couple of landmark corrections this research had to make to its own working assumptions before it could get started.
Brunswick Landing Has a Real Success Story -- and a Real, Unresolved Contamination Story
The former Naval Air Station Brunswick closed under the 2005 BRAC round, decommissioned in 2011, and its "Brunswick Landing" redevelopment is a genuinely rare good-news story for a closed military base: nearly 2,300 jobs now, more than double the original ten-year projection, spread across almost 150 companies including Wayfair and a Southern Maine Community College satellite campus. October 2025 brought a new Maine Maritime Academy workforce training center and a Maine Space Corporation testing lab, with a Martin's Point medical building and a 108-unit apartment complex still under construction. This part of the story is real and worth celebrating.
What does not belong in the same breath as that success story, but often gets left out of it: on August 19, 2024, an equipment failure at Hangar 4 released 1,450 gallons of PFAS-laden firefighting foam concentrate, mixed with roughly 50,000 gallons of water, into stormwater systems, Mare Brook, and Harpswell Cove, with peak surface-water PFAS readings topping 250,000 parts per trillion. The Environmental Working Group called it Maine's largest-ever firefighting-foam contamination event. A follow-up investigation concluded in October 2025 that an electrical fault likely caused it. Private well testing through mid-2025 generally came in below Maine's own 20-ppt standard, though above the stricter federal 4-ppt standard, and municipal water was not affected -- but fish and shellfish in the affected waterways exceeded Maine's tissue-contamination limits, a resident group called Brunswick United for a Safe Environment has organized in response, and as of the most current reporting found, environmental advocates say the community is "not out of the woods." Anyone weighing a move to Brunswick Landing or its surrounding neighborhoods should treat this as a live, still-developing story, not a closed chapter.
Harpswell's Tax Rate Looks Like a Bargain Because the Assessment Is Twenty Years Stale
Harpswell's 2024 mill rate is $6.36 per $1,000 of assessed value -- less than half of Brunswick's $13.22 and a fraction of what nearby towns like Cumberland charge. On its face that reads as Harpswell being the tax-friendly choice. It is not that simple, and presenting it that way would be misleading.
Harpswell has not run a townwide property revaluation since 2005 -- two full decades of assessed values drifting away from actual market prices. The town hired Vision Government Solutions under a $394,000 contract to run its first revaluation in twenty years, with field inspections starting in March 2025 and new tax bills, reflecting updated values, due in August 2026. Vision's own project manager estimated Harpswell property values have "at least doubled" since 2005, and a Select Board member has already predicted the nominal mill rate will fall sharply once the new numbers land -- even though the actual dollar amount homeowners owe may not drop proportionally at all. In other words: $6.36 per $1,000 is a snapshot of a tax system mid-transition, not a stable number to budget a purchase around. Anyone comparing Harpswell's tax bill to Brunswick's, or to any other town's, should wait for the post-revaluation figures rather than lean on the pre-2026 rate.
Eagle Island Is a Real Historic Site You Mostly Cannot Visit Right Now
Eagle Island was Arctic explorer Robert Peary's real summer retreat, purchased in 1881 and built up in stages through 1913, later donated to the State of Maine and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014. It is a genuinely significant piece of Harpswell's history. It is also, as of the most recent reporting found (a May 2026 account), in its seventh consecutive year of restricted public access.
The January 2024 storm sequence destroyed the island's pier -- three of its four stone cribs were lost -- and caused serious erosion at the island's southern end, closing the site for the entire 2024 season. Separately, mold and mildew from inadequate ventilation during the site's COVID-era closure damaged the historic house and its artifacts badly enough that Maine Preservation added Eagle Island to its 2024 "Most Endangered Historic Places" list. The park manager was quoted saying 2026 would look "awfully similar" to the two prior summers: visitors can land only by dinghy or kayak on the north beach, hike the trails, and view museum exhibits only through the windows from outside. A replacement pier and retaining-wall work are under contract, targeted for completion in May 2027. This is a real, worthwhile landmark to know about -- just do not plan a trip around touring Peary's house or the museum interior until that timeline actually holds.
Two Landmarks Everyone Assumes Are in Harpswell Are Not
Two water-access spots that get mentally filed under "Harpswell" because they sound coastal and rustic are not Harpswell landmarks at all. Simpson's Point -- a popular, informal swimming and boat-launch spot with a pebble beach, roughly four miles from the Bowdoin campus -- is in Brunswick. It has its own long-running, generation-to-generation swimming tradition (regulars in swim caps, even winter ice swims), and one historical account even places Civil War general Joshua Chamberlain's summer estate there. It belongs to Brunswick's story, not Harpswell's.
"The Basin," a tidal anchorage bordered by a 1,910-acre nature preserve, is not in Harpswell either -- it is in Phippsburg, a separate town near Bath that does not currently have its own page on this site. And to add one more layer of possible confusion: Harpswell does have its own, different "Basin," at Basin Point in South Harpswell, home to the Dolphin Marina & Restaurant. That one really is Harpswell's. The lesson either way: verify which town a specific Harpswell-adjacent landmark actually sits in before assuming it belongs to the town with the prettier name recognition.
Harpswell Is a Major Lobster Port -- Just Not Maine's Largest
Harpswell is genuinely one of the most lobster-dense towns in Maine: more than 275 licensed lobster harvesters, the highest count of any Maine town, and a 2014 NOAA study found roughly 40 percent of Harpswell jobs tied directly or indirectly to maritime work. It is easy to round that up into "Harpswell is Maine's largest lobster port" -- a claim repeated often enough that it is worth checking against the state's own numbers.
Maine's Department of Marine Resources tracks lobster landings by port every year, and by that measure Harpswell is not first. Stonington is Maine's dominant number-one lobster port by value every year from 2021 through 2025, at $49 to $74 million annually. Harpswell shows up in the statewide top 10 by value every single year in that stretch, which is a real and substantial credential -- but it ranks sixth or seventh, at $13.5 to $24 million annually, behind Stonington, Vinalhaven, Friendship, and, in 2025, Portland. By pounds landed, Harpswell ranks lower still, seventh to tenth. One honest wrinkle: the state tracks Cundy's Harbor, a village physically inside Harpswell, as a separate port from "Harpswell" in its own data, and combining the two would likely push Harpswell's ranking higher -- but that combined figure is this kind of informal arithmetic, not an official state statistic, so treat it as a plausible aside rather than a number to publish as fact.
A 2020 Shark Attack and a 2026 Policy Change Worth Knowing Before You Swim
On July 27, 2020, a 63-year-old summer resident was killed by a great white shark while swimming near Bailey Island -- widely reported as Maine's first recorded fatal shark attack. It is a real, tragic, well-documented event, not an urban legend, and it changed how the town handles warning flags.
A fresh string of great-white sightings in June and July 2026 prompted beach closures across several midcoast towns, and Harpswell responded by changing its own flag policy: rather than lowering the warning flag within 24 hours of a sighting, as before, flags now stay raised for the entire remainder of the summer season once the first confirmed great white sighting occurs. The town's parks director defended the change by noting sharks are "always" present in Harpswell's waters; some residents have publicly pushed back that an always-raised flag stops functioning as a live-threat alert. Either way, anyone planning to swim off Harpswell in season should know the flag now means something different than it used to.
Ready to talk to a local Brunswick / Harpswell agent?
Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. PFAS spill details from Portland Press Herald reporting ("First tests reveal high PFAS levels in spilled foam, ponds at Brunswick Landing," Aug. 26, 2024; "Brunswick reflects on year defined by massive spill of PFAS-contaminated foam," Aug. 19, 2025) and Central Maine's "Long-awaited report reveals electrical fault likely caused Brunswick PFAS spill" (Oct. 3, 2025). Brunswick Landing redevelopment figures from NewsCenter Maine's "10 years after the Navy, former base has bounced back" and Maine Public's "New maritime, aerospace facilities open in Brunswick" (Oct. 24, 2025). Harpswell mill rate and revaluation details from the Harpswell Anchor ("Harpswell property tax rate climbs 26 cents," Aug. 2024; "Harpswell property revaluation to begin in March," Feb. 2025) and mainerealestate.com's Property Taxes by Town compilation. Eagle Island details from the Harpswell Anchor's "With no pier and a moldy museum, Eagle Island remains in limbo" (May 2026) and Portland Press Herald's "Casco Bay island park honoring North Pole explorer closed for season due to storm damage" (Mar. 11, 2024). Simpson's Point sourced to the Bowdoin Orient's "Passing on the secret of Simpson's Point" (Sep. 7, 2018) and Portland Press Herald's "Your Land: Thoughts on Simpson's Point" (Mar. 5, 2021); the Basin (Phippsburg) sourced to the Cruising Club of America's own cruising guide; Basin Point, Harpswell sourced to Dolphin Marina & Restaurant's own site. Lobster-port rankings from Maine Department of Marine Resources' own "Top 10 Ports by Value and Pounds" table (maine.gov/dmr) and Harpswell's own municipal site on licensed harvesters. Shark attack and flag-policy details from Portland Press Herald's "New York woman killed in Maine's first fatal shark attack" (Jul. 28, 2020) and Bangor Daily News' "After sightings of deadly sharks, a Maine town will fly warning flags all summer" (Jul. 23, 2026). Facts and figures change; confirm current status directly with the Town of Brunswick, the Town of Harpswell, Maine's Bureau of Parks and Lands, or a licensed local professional before making a decision. Nothing on this page is legal, environmental, or financial advice.