Reed Wharf - Inn and Fish Houses - Owls Head, Maine C91-C

Reed Wharf - Inn and Fish Houses - Owls Head, Maine C91-C

View of Reed Wharf, Inn, fish houses, and beach at Owls Head, ME. Visible in image: wharf with lobster pots, inn, fish houses, other buildings, beach and water [included in the exhibit "Knox County Through Eastern's Eye"] Reed Wharf - Inn and Fish Houses - Owls Head, Maine The P. K. Reed family operated this wharf for about 80 years, serving local fishermen and other mariners. The wharf and harbor provided the town's children with many hours of swimming and mackerel fishing and sometimes a row around the harbor with a "borrowed" skiff. Rodney and Anna Mason now operate the wharf, adding a summer lunch shack to its traditional services of buying and selling lobsters and providing bait and gas to fishermen. The big white house was built in the early 1800's by Joshua Adams who operated it as the Adam's House, the town's first known boarding house. Several owners followed, including Mr. Elisha Brown who ran a nearby shipyard that built the brigantine Newsboy in 1849. Jeremiah Sleeper bought the house at auction in 1860 and raised the roof to accommodate a third-floor dance hall. Several owners followed, with the inn called both the Ocean House and the Owl's Head Inn. It has been the summer home of the Tony Faunce family since the mid-1900s. In the collection of sheds in the middle, the wharf owned the smallest white one, likely a utility shed. The cluster of sheds to the right of the white one (except for the gray hipped roof one) was owned by the Carolyn Bray family who used the largest shed and rented the others out to local lobstermen for bait storage. Only the largest shed, which is owned by Arthur Stanley Jr. and Linda Stanley, still stands. The gray hipped roof shed belonged to Charles and Iva Anderson whose home peeks through the trees on the right. Captain Carl and Nellie Reed's home was the white house behind the sheds. A road along the shore in front of the sheds has been long lost to erosion and development. Submitted by Tom and Linda Christie, Mussel Ridge Historical Society