The Camel

So, we’ve already covered the Tuttles—sorry, not sorry, about these sand puns!—but there are a few other characters that were important to the Desert’s history. The first is Henry Goldrup, an enterprising young man and something of a visionary. Back in 1926, when it was still known to locals as The Sand Farm, the Desert caught Henry’s attention and he bought the land for $400. According to his sons, Henry was looking for a place to put his hotdog stand, but he must have known this location would be popular beyond just being a place to get a tasty snack. Henry is also the one who called this place The Desert of Maine, even though he was well aware that it received far too much precipitation to be a true desert. In a short time, The Desert of Maine attracted attention from travel writers and hordes of tourists from all over the north east.

The next family to run the Desert were called the Polakewiches. They helped to further boost the Desert’s popularity with beautifully printed marketing materials and this funny camel sculpture here—we call her “Sandy.” They had a well-stocked gift shop including sand art by Mark’s daughter Marvis, and a wagon tour around the dunes pulled by Pedro the donkey… tours where they’d sometimes fudge the truth in the service of a good story. In probably the family’s craziest stunt, they dragged a couple of live camels onto the property, which wound up being a disaster. They never looked happy to be here and occasionally spit in visitor’s faces. After Mark died, his daughter Elaine took over operations and because she was cut from the same cloth, she took all of his marketing ideas and pushed them to the next level. And that went for bending some of the facts about the Desert. She had a famous phrase that she’d employ when instructing her tour guides, “Say whatever you want, just make it sincere!”

Though we love Elaine’s flair—she was a natural performer—we’re striving for historical accuracy on our tour because we think the truth is actually the most interesting version of events! Let’s walk over here and I’ll show you the Spring House, a structure that was recently excavated from under 25ft of sand!