harbour town yacht basin reviews

Harbour Town Yacht Basin

Location & Hours

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149 Lighthouse Rd

Hilton Head Island, SC 29928

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We love storing our boat here for a week every summer when we stay in Sea Pines. Beautiful area, clean grounds, and since its in a resort, it's not overcrowded or dirty. The water is usually pretty clean. Easy access to fuel and a hose at your boat slip. Lots of restaurants and shops surrounding the basin and a lovely faux lighthouse you can go to the top of.

See all photos from Emily H. for Harbour Town Yacht Basin

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Harbour Town Yacht Basin

Play in the heart of downtown baltimore, marina info.

In the heart of The Sea Pines Resort is Harbour Town Yacht Basin. This is Hilton Head's most famous marina for good reason! You will have resort-style accommodations and activities, plus the ideal place to play on inviting waters. Surrounded by a variety of delightful restaurants and boutiques, we also offer convenient access to world-class golf and tennis facilities. Likewise, a short walk can also take you to leisure paths, shopping, and a forest preserve. Since we're located directly on the sound, you'll have access to all watersports, fishing charters, sight-seeing tours, dinner cruises, and Pirates of Hilton Head excursions. Harbour Town Yacht Basin is ready to exceed your expectations.

2024 Rates: $4.00 - $5.00/ft

Fuel Prices

Summer (March to November): Mon - Sun07:00 am - 06:30 pmWinter (December to February): Mon - Sun07:30 am -4:00pm

Payment Types

Max Length (ft):

Approach depth (ft): , dock depth (ft):.

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Harbour Town Yacht Basin

Located in the heart of The Sea Pines Resort, the Harbour Town Yacht Basin is one of the top yachting destinations on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Marked by the distinctive red-and-white-striped Harbour Town Lighthouse, it has been welcoming boaters for more than 40 years. This full-service marina offers everything guests need for a cruise along the coast.

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Harbour Town

Price & Hours

• Food Scene 5.0
• Atmosphere 5.0

U.S. News Insider Tip: Take a drive to South Beach Marina at the southern tip of the island, just south of Harbour Town. The marina is home to water sports, the famed Salty Dog Café, and a beach as long and wide as a desert at low tide. – Carmen DeCecco

Hilton Head's Harbour Town district, a pocket inside the gated Sea Pines Resort community, is home to the iconic candy-cane-striped lighthouse that you've likely seen on television ads promoting the island and postcards around town. Aside from the famous lighthouse, you'll also spot lavish yachts dotting the marina, as well as a smattering of gorgeous rental properties, not to mention the Harbour Town Golf Links, home to the prestigious RBC Heritage golf tournament.

Harbour Town Restaurants

Popular Harbour Town eateries include HarbourTown Bakery & Café, Harbourside and the newly remodeled Quarterdeck. Located next to the lighthouse, the restaurant features a bar and dining area on the first floor and a rooftop oyster bar with an extraordinary view of the water.

Things to Do

Stroll out toward the water after a meal, preferably dinner, as sunset is known to be particularly enchanting. Plus, much of the time you can enjoy live music during the summer under The Liberty Oak at the Harbour Town Yacht Basin. As for shopping, you'll find everything from souvenirs, such as postcards and T-shirts, to home decor, fine apparel and artwork of the area.

According to recent visitors, the charming community and relaxed atmosphere of Harbour Town is definitely worth the trip. Merely walking along the water and grabbing a bite to eat is enough to take in the ambiance. Many recommend climbing the 114 steps to the top of the lighthouse where there's a souvenir shop, and excellent views of the marina, the 18th Lawn of the Harbour Town Golf Links, the Calibogue Sound and Daufuskie Island . What's more, several cruises, boat tours and dolphin-watching excursions depart from Harbour Town.

If you want to see more of the surrounding Sea Pines community, which spans 5,000 acres, consider renting a bike and exploring its 15 miles of bike-friendly trails. Aside from the iconic lighthouse, Sea Pines is also home to horse stables , tennis courts, three golf courses, the 605-acre Sea Pines Forest Preserve and water sport rentals.

How to get to Harbour Town

Harbour Town rests in the bottom "toe" of the island. Because it is located within Sea Pines – a private, residential community – all cars are required to pay a cash entrance fee ($9 for standard vehicles). However, if you're a guest of the Sea Pines Resort, you'll receive a complimentary access pass for the duration of your stay, and many businesses reimburse the gate fee if you spend above a certain amount. The Harbour Town Lighthouse is open from 10 a.m. to sundown every day of the week and costs $6.25 to climb to the top (free for children 5 and younger). Visit Harbour Town's page on the Sea Pines Resort website for more details on visiting and activities.

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Coligny Beach is especially popular with families. Along with the beautiful coastal scenery, facilities are clean and accessible. Although the beach can get crowded during summer, travelers note you can walk down the shore away from the park and find wider spaces and fewer people. During summer months, be wary of jellyfish. While lifeguards are equipped to deal with most jellyfish stings, it's best to check conditions before entering the water. Take advantage of Hilton Head’s official beach web page for more information about regulations and visitor tips. You'll want to be respectful of the loggerhead sea turtle nests, horseshoe crabs, sand dollars, sea oats and local wildlife rules .

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Harbour Town Yacht Club

• Hilton Head Island, SC

About this business

Location details.

149 Lighthouse Rd, Hilton Head Island, SC, 29928, United States

• Facebook (98)
• Google (393)
• Birdeye (0)

A great experience, exciting staff and excellent food! Make sure you take in the view of the harbor and the lighthouse from the rooftop!! — with Karen Calamari Kelly.  

Great place to be!!! Awesome Food!! Nice Ocean Breeze!!!  

it is simply beautiful and the food was great.  

Nice and beautiful place! Perfect for spend time with friends and family.  

The upper deck is the best place on the island to view the sunset!  

it's just beautiful here!!!  

Great food and a cool atmosphere! Definitely recommended for a fun night in a cool area!  

We had the best time and can’t wait to come back just beautiful  

Frequently asked questions about Harbour Town Yacht Club

How is harbour town yacht club rated.

Harbour Town Yacht Club has a 4.7 star rating with 491 reviews.  

When is Harbour Town Yacht Club open?

Harbour Town Yacht Club is closed now. It will open at 7:00 a.m.  

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Speak with a specialist to learn how you can grow with Birdeye. We are reachable at [email protected]

Harbour Town Yacht Basin

• Total Slips: 100
• Max Length: 160'
• Dock Depth: 7'

Cruising Club Discounts

• Boat Rentals
• Fitness Center / Health Club
• Floating Docks
• Golf Nearby
• Groceries Nearby
• Hotel/Lodging Nearby
• Laundry Facilities
• Medical Facilities Nearby
• Picnic Area
• Post Office Nearby
• Restaurant Nearby
• Restaurant On-Site
• Service/Maintenance
• Swimming Pool
• Travel Lift
• Water Sport Rental

Rates / Policies

DAILY & WEEKLY DOCKAGE RATES: Daily 49′ and smaller – $2.75 50-79′ – $3.25 80′ and larger – $3.75

Weekly 49′ and smaller – $2.25 50-79′ – $2.75 80′ and larger – $3.25

DAILY & WEEKLY UTILITY RATES: 30 amp: $.35 per foot per day 50 amp: $.50 per foot per day 100 amp: $.70 per foot per day Three-phase power is metered and billed per usage.

MONTHLY DOCKAGE RATE: The monthly dockage rate at Harbour Town Yacht Basin is $32 per foot per month, based on the greater length of boat versus slip length.

Rates subject to change. Additional premium of $70 per foot for the week of the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing. Rates are based on a 5-night minimum stay.

MONTHLY UTILITY RATES: 30 amp: $1.00 per foot per month 50 amp: $2.50 per foot per month 100 amp: $5.00 per foot per month Three-phase power is metered and billed per usage. *Utility rates include power, water and Wi-Fi.

RESORT FEES: $7 per day $75 per month

Resort fee includes preferred rates at Sea Pines Resort golf courses, restaurants and retail outlets, two hours of complimentary tennis per day, , complimentary use of The Sea Pines Resort Fitness Center equipment and Harbour Town swimming pool, and other valuable discounts with the certified partners of The Sea Pines Resort.

CANCELLATION POLICY: This marina has a 24 hour cancellation policy. Please contact the marina or booking agent more than 24 hours in advance to be eligible for a full refund. All refunds are at the discretion of the dockmaster on site.

NOTE: The Salon/Spa is nearby and the shuttle service is seasonal.

Additional Information

• Mega Yacht Slips
• Latitude:  32.138099
• Longitude:  -80.811934

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25. Check Out Legendary Harbour Town

Harbour Town is “must do” – a great place for the whole family to spend a whole day. It is the center of activity within The Sea Pines Resort.

Things To Do

Start your day in a rocking chair under the Liberty Oak, an ancient tree that was saved from destruction by Charles Fraser during the construction of Harbour Town. Visit the Charles Fraser Statue, a tribute to the man who conceived and constructed this island’s first resort and residential plantation. Let your kids vent their energy at the Gregg Russell Playground .

There are also over 20 shops for your browsing pleasure and numerous restaurants that feature everything from seafood to steak.

Harbour Town Lighthouse Museum

Climb the 114-step Harbour Town Lighthouse Museum , Hilton Head’s 47-year-old signature landmark. When you reach the top, you must go outside and take in the 360-degree view. Shop in the charming Top of the Lighthouse Shoppe , and don’t miss their new the ground floor Maritime Gift Galley, a unique nautical shop and bookstore.

On the Pier

On the pier, you can select from any number of activities out on the water – pirate sails for the kids, sailing  aboard the trimaran “Sumo” , nature tours , parasailing , wave running , boat rentals , charter fishing , and dinner cruises .   All ages would enjoy a leisurely scenic nature cruise aboard the “Vagabond “, a dinner cruise aboard the “Spirit of Harbour Town” , or a crabbing adventure aboard the “Tammy Jane” .

At the Nature Center, located between the bakery and CQ’s, you can make reservations for any number of guided nature tours as well as activities for the youngsters. It also has live animal exhibits, hands-on displays, and nature-related merchandise.

Unless you’re staying within Sea Pines, there is a fee to pass through the gates, but it’s good for the whole day.

For more information, contact:

Harbour Town Lighthouse Museum (843-671-2318)

Maritime Gift Galley (843-671-2318)

Photography by Jeff Keefer (843-732-0461)

Spirit of Harbour Town (Vagabond Cruises) (843-363-9026)

Stars and Stripes (Vagabond Cruises) (843-363-9236)

Sumo Charters (843-671-4386)

Tammy Jane (Vagabond Cruises) (843-363-9023)

Top of the Lighthouse Shoppe (843-671-2310)

The Vagabond (Vagabond Cruises) (843-363-9023)

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Welcome to the Harbour Town Yacht Club

This is the spot where Hilton Head Island was invented. The original idea of blending a European-style seaside village with the glorious subtropical comforts of a Carolina barrier island began right here. No place has kept the faith better than Harbour Town Yacht Club.

For more than 30 years Harbour Town Yacht Club has been the centerpiece of Hilton Head Island at its best. The founder’s vision is alive here today.

Harbour Town Yacht Club has been recognized as the epitome of Sea Pines living. Founded not only for yacht owners, but for anyone who appreciates being at the heart of things, we have been home to the accomplished, the gracious, the perceptive for more than 30 years.

The balance of innovation and tradition, the preservation of nature, the respect for people and their finer inclinations – all these basic values are expressed here in a remarkable kind of hospitality.

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• Film Review: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears [part 2]

10 February 2014

The film starts with the song “Aleksandra” by Tatiana and Sergey Nikitin. We know that it may have more significance than a mere opening sequence only after watching the second part of the film. Katya’s daughter is, after all, named Aleksandra. The film also ends with the same song. Although Aleksandra, herself, seems to be second to Katya’s story and all the characters from part one. Nonetheless, the director, Vladimir Men’Shov, wants us to notice her and wants us to think about her in the end.

The song goes something like “Aleksandra, this city is ours together. We have become its fate.” The song is trying to say that we are a product of our circumstances. Just as Alexandra was a passive character, so is everybody in Russia. They are products of the State, which seems to be changing every decade or two. At the beginning of the film, Alexandra seems unattached and uninterested in her mother. Her mother, Katya, always seems to be too busy working to give her much attention. Then when Gosha comes along, these circumstances change her attitude. Instead of listening to music and being closed off from the world and in doors, we see her outside, open and friendly.These circumstances seemed to have changed her for the better.

Then there is Gosha, whose circumstances gave him some distinct values. Despite being the most lovable character of the films we have watched thus far, he has one flaw: he is extremely patriarchal. He tells Katya that he would leave her if she ever raised her voice at him. He thinks that a man should always make more money than a woman. He is extremely old-fashioned. This works for him because he is such a gentleman. This does not work because the times have  changed. With Perestroika, the traditional values were dissolving. Just like Katya, women everywhere were rising to power. Gosha could not deal with this and leaves Katya when he finds out where she works.

There is a bit of irony here. In part one, a non-decent man leaves her because she lies and about being rich. In part two, a good man leaves her because she lies about being poor. One of the lessons to learn here is definitely to remain open. Part one even takes place during the Great Thaw. The director wants to show the consequences of not being open; he was criticizing the State.

Back to Gosha, he decides to come back to Katya. Being a good man, he decides to adapt to the times because he loves Katya. With Gosha, the director wanted to say that as a State, we do not have to give up  all  of our old values. We should just give up the bad ones (such as patriarchy).

Katya is also a symbol of pardoning the State. Katya is such a good, hard-working person. Yet, she find herself in trouble when she lies. Lying does not come natural to her. She represents the State, specifically Krushev. Krushev meant the beast for his country but he was just uneducated; he was naive, just like Katya.

The different characters seem to foil the different leaders of Russia. Ludmilla could be like Breshnev, power-hungry and motivated by shiny things. In the end, though, she does not end up with much. She is still left chasing shiny things. Similarly, Breshnev lead for the glory yet hardly accomplished a thing, hence, his era is known as Stagnation.

Over all, the film reminds us that the State should work  for its people  because the condition of the government determines the condition of its people. On top of that, those who can adapt (like Katya and Gosha) will fare the best.

Despite his gentle critique of the State, there is no doubt that Men’Shov loves his country and sympathizes with the State, too. This is apparent in the following lines of  Aleksandra:  “The love for Moscow doesn’t come fast, but it is true and pure the way a mother’s love is stronger than any other.”

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I Put Up a Fence in Maine. Why Did It Cause Such a Fuss?

The goal was to shield our house from the road, but it soon turned into something much more revealing.

The author, Heidi Julavits, at her home, which was built in 1815. Credit... Fumi Nagasaka for The New York Times

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By Heidi Julavits

Heidi Julavits is a writer who grew up in Portland, Maine.

• July 15, 2024

When we bought our house in Maine 23 years ago, people welcomed us to town with tales of local mishaps and gaffes. Barns that almost burned down. Pipes that burst. The man a mile down the road who built a fence. This chatty imparting of intel functioned simultaneously as a gesture of hospitality and a comical how-not-to primer, containing valuable survival and etiquette tips. Our town of about 830 residents more than doubles in size during the summer, when part-time residents like me arrive. The fence story suggested what types of behavior on your personal property were, and were not, considered neighborly in a town where zoning ordinances are few.

Listen to this article, read by Kirsten Potter

“You won’t ever get rid of the magazine room, will you?” people asked. The magazine room is on our house’s second floor. It’s basically a vintage mood board, and more of a windowless crawl space than a room, accessible through what looks like a cupboard door. A much earlier resident, or successive generations of earlier residents, had patchworked the pitched, unpainted walls of the magazine room with clippings from what appeared to be fashion, adventure-story and homemaking periodicals dating to the first half of the 1900s.

We promised never to renovate the magazine room.

We promised to change very little about our house, at least what was visible from the road, including the 11-foot-tall deciduous hedge that ran the length of our yard and seasonally blurred our view of the traffic coming in and out of town.

But then the hedge began to fail. An expert from a nearby nursery arrived with a clipboard and pronounced our hedge an invasive, nonnative weed, not worth saving. But we loved the weed. We topped it. We fertilized it.

It was on the leisurely upswing when, 16 years after we bought our house, a woman driving a fancy S.U.V. jumped the culvert, plowed through the hedge, jumped the culvert again and sped off. Had the man behind her not followed her home, she might have tried to get away with her (as everyone agreed) very impressive stunt driving.

We weren’t in town at the time, and so could only view photographic evidence of the damage: the gouged earth, the long hedge like a smile missing some of its teeth. Our reaction was impulsive and in retrospect, baffling: We would use the money we received from the stunt driver to put up a fence.

Even one year earlier, we might have planted a new hedge, possibly even a native one. But the person driving over our front lawn felt like a slapstick escalation of a recent trend I had observed. Previously, living on our road was like living on the ocean, but with much lower property taxes; its perils could be charted and managed, like the tides. But then the unofficial speed limit outside our house increased from 35 m.p.h. to 45, even occasionally 50. At this time, I had younger children, and many friends with young children, and a trampoline in the backyard that, even if we weren’t home, was “open” to bouncing enthusiasts, which sometimes included middle-aged men when the neighborhood threw parties. The slight curve near our driveway made it difficult to see cars coming at higher speeds, which meant even adults, people arguably in possession of better judgment than a 7-year-old, were nearly hit a few times trying to leave on a bike.

At first, I accepted (even embraced!) the road as my problem to solve, and thus I indulged many energizing, problem-solving fantasies. I would pay my daughter to wear a cop costume and stand at the end of our driveway and point a hair dryer, which at high speeds would register as a radar gun, at oncoming cars. I would put up the sort of signs that make me slow down. FREE STUFF. YARD SALE. I would buy a baby doll, strap it into a stroller and leave the stroller in the middle of the road.

But I also felt resigned to a foregone fate. The intensifying situation on the road, I suspected, was the natural progression of an economic agreement struck more than a century ago between transportation advances and Maine as a nonexportable resource. The state’s slogan “Vacationland” first appeared on car license plates in 1936 and still appears on the Maine border sign that greets drivers as they enter via I-95, the state’s primary national highway. But Maine’s identity as a seasonal purification rite for urbanites dates further back than even the invention of cars, to the years following the Civil War.

I’m neurotically attuned (some might say) to this history’s lingering rumbles. I was born and raised in Maine, and so I’ve been versed since my earliest moments of sentience in Maine’s identity as something both staunchly fixed and, during the summer months, menaced from all directions, including the sea, by visitors — “From Aways.” While my parents moved to Portland in 1965, after which my brother and I were born, we were also, according to some measures of nativeness, invaders ourselves. Rather than “Mainers Who Can Trace Their Mainerness Back Through Many Generations of Other Mainers Who Lived Only in Maine,” my parents, and by eventual extension my brother and I, were the type of Mainer defined as “Year-Round Resident, Seasonally Irritated.”

Yet my father was and is Mainer enough that this history still irks him. He recently, while visiting, groused of summer people (to me, now technically a summer person), “They showed up thinking we should adapt to their ways, rather than them adapting to ours.” His frustration was not about “us” demanding compliance, and failing to get it, from part-time residents or tourists; he was reacting to the outsiders’ hubristic refusal to value local knowledge that a person might share as a form of wary welcome.

He and my mother still love to tell the story that they heard from friends of an 1980s invasion by the New York Yacht Club, when their annual summer cruise came to Maine. The story, which the Yacht Club denies ever happened, has to me the true-ringing feel of what was then a century’s worth of encounters between Mainers and summer people, efficiently condensed into a colorful how-not-to tale. The club members, ignoring the cautions from local bystanders, piled onto a dock as if it were a commuter-train platform and waited for a launch to take them to their individual yachts, presumably sailed north for them by hired captains. The dock float sank lower and lower and finally swamped, dumping into the harbor the club members, some of whom had flown to the Portland International Jetport straight from New York in their business suits and were still, when they hit the ocean, holding their briefcases.

During the summer of 2016, when the speed of cars driving past our house was frequently 10 to 15 m.p.h. above the posted limit, I did something I’d never done before. I complained. I visited the town selectmen, one of whom asked, “Are you related to Bill?” He and my father worked together, we eventually determined, back in the ’90s. This is how encounters tend to start in a state with just over a million people, in a town with just under a thousand people, when you have a last name that not even your close childhood friends can spell.

The selectmen were sympathetic to the speeding issue — I was not the first to complain, and nor were these complaints coming only from seasonal residents — but their message of thoughtful, if cautious, consideration reflected those I’d encountered in casual conversation. Possibly, the town’s attitude toward speeding was like the attitude toward zoning laws, or the ongoing lack of them — a respectful attempt to manage new civic challenges while preserving the state’s historical spirit of self-determination.

My husband and I honored that spirit after the stunt driver busted through our hedge. Our small son, when informed about our plans to build a fence, stared melancholically through the ragged gap, as if we’d just told him that we intended to continue the damage that the stunt driver had only begun — which in a sense, we had.

“Only depressed people build fences,” he said.

We didn’t lecture him on the difference between depression and anxiety, between anxiety and acute situational awareness, between acute situational awareness and instant, awful death, because first we needed to fully kill the hedge we had spent nearly a decade trying to save. Then we needed someone to install the fence. We settled on a fence company located a little over an hour away. The reviews were good. Their customers — whoever they were, and in whatever bizarre, fence-loving towns they lived — seemed happy.

But as we scrolled through fence styles online, none seemed like the obvious choice. My inability to know which fence was the right fence should have suggested: There was no right fence. True, I was not fluent in the language of fences. I didn’t know how tall a fence should be. I didn’t know what kind of fence would look best with our house, because our house, and most houses like it, did not have fences marking a property boundary. Maine was more of a “sign” place. This was how you knew you were crossing, or trespassing, a border.

Signs change, however; or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the messages on signs do. Despite what would seem to be its wild success, the “Vacationland” state slogan was updated in 1987 by Maine’s Office of Tourism to “The Way Life Should Be.” (A giant sign posted on I-95 near Kittery read in full, “Welcome Home/The Way Life Should Be.”)

This new slogan, while on its surface more breezily aspirational, caused perplexity, and signaled different things to different people. If, for example, a person had recently met with their local elected officials, they might think that Maine, as a matter of no-frills pragmatism (and increasingly, it seemed, as a marketing virtue) wasn’t hampered by the sometimes-unnuanced oversteps of federal governance. Others might find the slogan puzzlingly out of touch, given that poverty rates were on the rise; what, too, might the slogan imply in a state whose racial demographics were 98 percent white? Others might worry the slogan could risk insulting tourists, presumably the target audience, about their way of life.

“The Way Life Should Be,” depending on the song that happened to be playing in your car after you drove over the border and first beheld the welcome sign, could also thrum with minor-key warning: Don’t come here thinking that things need to change.

But one thing that kept changing was the state’s highway signage. Gov. Angus King, an independent who held office from 1995 until 2003, installed two additional signs flanking I-95, “Maine. Worth a Visit. Worth a Lifetime” — the equivalent of a person seeding your subconscious as you entered the state and then handing you a tempting real estate listing as you left. Later, in 2011, Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, sharpened King’s suggestive soft sell into what sounded like a deregulated fire sale by attaching, beneath the original northbound sign, a supplemental message. Now it read, “Welcome to Maine/The Way Life Should Be/OPEN FOR BUSINESS.”

Our choice of fence may have abided by some, all or none of these slogans. Seven feet tall, the fence was solid, not lattice-y, made of vertical cedar tongue-and-groove boards. (The invoice we received from the fence company bluntly itemized it as a “privacy panel.”) We had decided that if we were going to build a fence, we should seize the chance not to see cars, and to muffle the rise and fall of their engines. Before the stunt-driver incident, some friends were visiting with their dog when it ran into the road and was killed. (My father, standing in our yard at the time, said, “At least it wasn’t a kid.” He might have tabled this observation for a few hours or weeks, but he wasn’t wrong.) At that point, I was still hearing a large animal being struck every time a car drove by, especially because of what my father had said: The dog might have been a kid.

The fence we chose was topped by a mini-fence detail that ran the length of it, to visually soften the highway-sound-barrier vibe. The cap rail read “fence” in the way the fence did not, which further suggested: This fence was not only a fence. It was also an overreaction — a fearful response to what might have happened, rather than what did. And if the fence was meant to decrease the chances that a person might drive into the yard again, or that one of us might be hit on the road, it did not make us safer from either threat.

I wasn’t home the day the fence was installed. I left in the morning, and by the time I returned, it was there. It was far too tall for our tiny house behind it. It was an unweathered cedar slab, practically neon-yellow when the sun hit it. It gave me an awful feeling of remorse in the pit of my stomach from the moment I first saw it.

The fence caused an immediate stir, which I found highly distressing, but also affirming, because I agreed with the dissenters, some of whom were my dear friends. Other members of the community conveyed their feelings publicly, in writing. Our town is home to at least one, and maybe more, anonymous activists who express their opinions via handmade signs; they’re like an online comments section, posted high — often very high — in the air. One of these commenters posted a sign on the road, just north of our house, which, on the plus side, possibly caused the average speed limit to temporarily decrease. TRUMP’S BORDER WALL 1 MILE AHEAD. The sign was nailed to the top of an electrical pole; the inability to remove it without a bucket truck reinforced the permanence of the opinion.

At first, this message, much like “The Way Life Should be,” contained a multiplicity of possible readings. What might, however, initially be interpreted as a protest by a left-wing resident was in fact — at least I think it was — in 2017 a much more layered calling-out of our presumed liberalism, as city-dwelling From Aways. If so, I took their point. Look at these hypocritical people who are probably opposed to Trump’s wall, putting up a wall.

After the initial furor died down, circumspect friends would say, consolingly, “It’ll gray up eventually.” One or two congratulated me. I had every right to build a fence. Others refused to countenance my regret. When I shared my thoughts about future plants or bushes that might take the fence’s place, should it magically disappear, one person said, “I think you have to accept the fact of the fence.”

These varied responses summed up the paradox of the fence. It was the most From Away thing I could have done; it was also the most Maine thing I could have done. People were discouraged from building fences, but because it was our property, nobody had the right to tell us what we could do on it.

This also probably explained why no one vandalized the fence, even though it was a long, blank canvas that honestly might have looked a little cheerier with a hit of spray paint. It was my psychological boundary line made material. People respected it. In some ways, they respected it too much. The fence altered our social weather patterns. Before the fence, friends and acquaintances would stop by regularly. After we built the fence, these impromptu visits slowed. Some people started to text beforehand to announce they’d be dropping by, or to ask if it was OK; they suddenly felt they needed permission to see us.

As the summer wound down, acquaintances and friends would ask ribbingly, “How’s your wall?” Most people had an opinion, or a teasing-yet-not comment, which at a minimum illustrates how visible our house is and how many people drive past it.

Yet on the plus side, which I strove to see, we were becoming the future tale to be told to newcomers; our fence, and the community response to it, would be entered in the oral history, and we would be immortalized. It wouldn’t be the first time: After taking ownership of our house in 2001, we wasted no time starring in a cautionary story about arrivals to town who didn’t know much. Our very first winter, we turned off the breaker to the sump pump instead of the well pump, and then there was a violent rainstorm, then the basement flooded, then the furnace became submerged and broke, then the temperature plummeted, then the pipes burst, then the well pump continued to empty the well water into the dining room, and because our foundation slumps toward the woods, then the water flowed out below the roofline and formed a thick, frozen waterfall on the exterior wall that threatened to pull down the back half of the house.

Not for the last time, we were a source of comedic incompetence; we had failed to understand how winter works, and how water works, and how electricity works. But the story of the fence was proof of a different, more publicly visible failure to understand. Or worse: understanding, but not caring.

We did care. This made the fact of the fence inscrutable even to us. Not even a year after building the fence, my husband stood outside one evening, assessing it with a look of bewilderment. “I don’t know why we did that,” he said.

The following summer, we planted a row of native, climbing hydrangeas to cover the exterior of the fence in green so that, to those driving by even at moderate speeds, it might be indistinguishable from the previous hedge. The hydrangeas grew quickly, but not quickly enough. I found myself caught between guilt and annoyance when greeted by someone with another “wall” joke. If the people who lived in town weren’t thrilled with the fence, they had every good reason to feel that way, because we’d permanently altered their view; also, they had learned to coexist with the road without building a fence, so why couldn’t we?

I had less patience for the seasonal people who lived on the water, far from the busy road. They were cranky that their scenic drive to the grocery store had been changed; they could no longer be cleansed by the preindustrial beauty of Maine as they sped past our old farmhouse to buy food. I had to hold my tongue when a patrician summer person who lived on the coast, down two private dirt roads, announced to me, “It is a person’s community duty not to change the front of their house.”

Which sentiment I did not entirely disagree with. Our house, for example, was both ours and not. For nearly a decade, our house was referred to by the former owner’s name; for the FedEx delivery person to find us, we had to repeatedly clarify that we lived in their house. In our town, maybe in many small towns, the houses are a way of recording recent human history. Our house was communal property, in a sense; a public holding of the historical society.

This was also why we were so committed to preserving the magazine room. It functioned as a museum to the generations who preceded us. I often took visitors up to see the clippings, though the room had become harder and harder to access. First there were five, then 10, then 15 years’ worth of books and clothing barricading entry. Only the most agile person could squeeze past the threshold, or a committed, bushwhacking person like my daughter, who always found a new cache of clothes that interested her as the fashion trends in her present made renewably relevant the leftovers of our past, which we had stuffed into trash bags and taken to hurling from the doorway into the middle of the room.

Yet questions of preservation — and how a slogan like “The Way Life Should Be” might freeze a place in time, or raise questions of what should be, rather than what is — could, depending on your interpretation, suggest a widespread consensus that never existed. In 2019, Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, replaced LePage’s “Welcome to Maine/The Way Life Should Be/OPEN FOR BUSINESS” with, simply, “MAINE/Welcome Home.” (Three months later Mills added back the 1987 slogan; the sign currently reads “MAINE/Welcome Home/The Way Life Should Be.”) This latest tweak might announce the state’s increased openness, not just to seasonal visitors but also to people relocating from other states and countries. It might be an exhortation for residents, new and old, to consider the state not as a fixed entity but as an increasingly porous and diverse one, built atop a sturdy foundation of resourcefulness and autonomy.

The responsibilities a newcomer might have, or not have, in a place they call home, even for part of the year — these are questions that I think about constantly. When is inaction in the name of respect, or preservation, an abnegation of civic duty? When is preservation used as noble cover to forbid new people’s access to a place? When is a newcomer’s confident sense of what should be actually an imposition of their values?

But “Welcome Home/The Way Life Should Be” is also the epigraph to every person’s childhood memories, assuming they associate home with happiness. That nostalgia — also the sense of melancholy or outrage — can intensify in direct proportion to the amount of change that has happened to your home since you left it.

The fence is seven years old now, but it is still occasionally a source of friendly teasing. Last winter, I drove up alone, and arrived after dark, and left my car in the road so I could move a branch that had fallen across the driveway. A friend pulled up beside me and said, smiling, “Are you locked out of your compound?”

Each passing year also deepens a paradox; to add more months to the time I’ve spent in Maine adds more months to the time I’ve spent not in Maine. If time is the singular measure, the longer I live in Maine, the more of a From Away I become.

Yet even when I’m not in Maine, I represent a demographic causing an increasingly dire housing crisis. Mills’s welcome sign became prophetic; during the pandemic, people from out of state bought places that had been on the market for years, in some cases more than a decade.

In 2019, the average sale price in our county was down about 25 percent from the previous year. But between 2020 and 2021, the average sale price increased by almost 41 percent. Our house, for years a depreciating-to-stagnant money pit, was suddenly worth so much that we might have nearly broken even had we decided to sell; but the price point would dictate that buyer would probably be a From Away, and a well-off one.

This trend extends beyond our county. In May, Portland, my former hometown, was named the “hottest luxury housing market in the United States” for the third quarter in a row, its prices up 22 percent from 2023. And yet, despite the rise in housing costs and the state’s evolving national appeal — from wilderness idyll for those who enjoy freezing water, no-sand beaches and insect sieges to a differently commodified version of escape — certain local numbers might suggest that little has changed. The number of children in the public elementary school has remained roughly the same. The town voting rolls haven’t increased much; there were, however, 30 or 40 more car registrations during the pandemic.

Some in town seem invested in change, and more of it may be on the horizon. Given that the community isn’t a monolith and never was, these shifts are not unanimously viewed as either losses or improvements. A committee formed to consider hiring a harbor master. The anonymous sign-posters were busy again when the selectmen decided to no longer allow an annual ritual in which people drag busted docks and boats and appliances into the center of town and host a gathering late into the night, after which, at dawn, a man with a crane takes the junk pile to the dump. Some of the signs were historically indignant: “100+ YEAR … TRADITION.” Others, hung on top of electrical poles, were more taunting: “NICE TRY SELECTMEN.” Others spoke to a broader crisis: “WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?”

The town installed a permanent speed monitor, which I believe is meant to flash when a person is driving above the posted limit, but it’s hard to know for certain. The current monitor is actually the second of its kind, because the original sustained a fatal shooting, and the new one soon acquired half a dozen bullet holes, and so doesn’t work either. The monitor, in alerting nobody to anything save someone’s opposition to it, was maybe more a public referendum on speed management than a speed-management strategy.

Other things are changing, too. The magazine room, like the hedge before it, is failing. Allowing a thing to simply be, it turns out, is a slow path to its extinction. The uninsulated space heats up these days to what must be over 100 degrees during the summer, and for that reason I tend not to go there, and so was surprised to find, while we were supposedly preserving it, that the magazine room is in ruins. The glue is decomposing; the desiccated clippings, when touched, turn to dust. Someday, the walls will be bare.

Our fence, meanwhile, has weathered to a medium-dark gray. The climbing hydrangeas look like goofy, bungling creatures, their paws pushing through the railings on top of the fence, so that I can see them even when I’m behind it. Their invasion is a welcome one. I’ve started to wonder whether if, in the future, the person who owns this house decides to take the fence down, such a decision will prove controversial; might the fence, a once-glaring newcomer, be considered part of the town’s history and thus, like the magazine room, qualify for protection? If nothing else, and in the meantime, will people wish to preserve the tradition of teasing us about it?

I might even wish to preserve that tradition. The familiar ribbing — “How’s your wall?” — is practiced by fewer and fewer people, to the point that now it feels like an affectionate and even nostalgic way of greeting me after I’ve been away. The once-habitual exchange preserves a record, the way the historical society preserves photos of buildings and residents that no longer exist, of the occasional challenges of coexistence, even or especially among well-meaning people who like and respect one another.

One day last summer, as I was standing at the end of my driveway, a woman I’d never seen before walked by. She might have been a new resident, or someone’s guest, or a person on vacation. I experienced an odd mixture of relief and sorrow when she smiled at me and said, “That is such a beautiful fence.”

Heidi Julavits is a writer whose recent memoir is “Directions to Myself.” Fumi Nagasaka is a photographer in New York whose work over the last few years has focused on documenting America. For this assignment, she traveled to three different towns in Maine.

Read by Kirsten Potter

Narration produced by Emma Kehlbeck and Krish Seenivasan

Engineered by Lance Neal

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