Maine Coastal Program

Getting to the Shore

Right-of-Way Discovery Grant Program

Shoreline access is vital to all of Maine's coastal communities--residents and visitors alike need access for fishing, clamming, boating, picnicking, swimming, exploring, and other activities. The Maine Coastal Program helps communities keep track of existing public access through a Right-of-Way Discovery Grant Program. Every year, the Coastal Program awards small grants of approximately $1,000 to municipalities or local land trusts to research forgotten or overlooked public rights-of-way. Discovery grants are intended to help communities find and assert public rights-of-way to the shore which may be lost by the passing of generations and changing land ownership patterns.

For more information, view the ROW Discovery Grant brochure and guidebook, or contact Jim Connors (Jim.Connors@maine.gov, 207-287-8938).

Coastal Water Access Report

Download the Coastal Water Access Report in PDF (125K) or Word (270K) format.

"Who Owns the Beaches?"

The Maine coast, with its many harbors, coves, and inlets stretches about 4,342 miles (6,987 kilometers) and makes Maine the third largest State in terms of tidally influenced shoreline. Most of Maine’s coast is rocky ledge. Maine has about 75 miles of beaches, half of which are sand beaches and half of which are rock and pebble beaches. Most of Maine’s sandy beaches are on the southern Maine coast, south of Portland. For a more detailed physical description of the Maine coast and other related geological and oceanographic information, visit the Maine Geological Survey’s web page at: http://state.me.us/doc/nrimc/mgs/marine/marine.htm.

Most of Maine's shoreline is privately owned, and access to the shore is correspondingly limited. In Maine, unlike many other coastal states, a private landowner may own the intertidal zone, the land area between mean high and mean low tide lines. Private ownership of the intertidal zone is subject to a public easement for fishing, fowling, and navigation. This public easement is an element of Maine’s common law heritage as a former part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The public easement is similar to the Public Trust Doctrine as construed and applied in other states as a source of public property rights and natural resource protections.

In 1989, Maine’s state supreme court issued a landmark decision (Bell v. Town of Wells, 557 A.2d 168 (1989), known as the Moody Beach decision) clarifying and limiting the scope of public rights reserved under the public easement in Maine’s intertidal zone. The Court determined that the scope of the public’s rights is limited to those specified in the Ordinance: fishing, fowling, and navigation, for both commercial and recreational purposes, as well as uses reasonably incidental to fishing, fowling, and navigation. The Court ruled that the public easement does not give the public a broad and general right to recreate (sunbath, swim, surf, play ball, etc.) in privately owned intertidal areas.

For a more detailed discussion of the Moody beach case and public shoreline access rights, visit http://www.seagrant.umaine.edu/documents/pdf/pubacc04.pdf. Although somewhat dated, this 1990 article remains a useful summary of the Moody Beach case and related coastal access issues.