Desert of Maine

A dinner-plate-sized patch of sand appeared on the Tuttle family farm one day in the 1800s and then swallowed forty acres, entire buildings, and farming equipment in its slow-motion conquest. The family had bought the land in 1821 and promptly stripped it with poor farming practices and relentless sheep grazing, eroding topsoil until they exposed 12,500-year-old glacial silt left behind when a nearly two-mile-thick ice sheet ground Maine into sand. The Tuttles abandoned their barren “sand farm” in 1890. In 1925, Henry Goldrup bought the cursed property for $300 and opened it as a tourist attraction. Talk about going from deserted to desert!