From the Falmouth Enterprise · January 21, 1975
On January 17, 1975, Falmouth Conservation Commission chairman George F. Kelly wrote to Dr. Albert Lincoln Washburn in Bellevue, Washington, asking to buy Washburn Island. Reports that the island might be sold for development had led the selectmen to put an article in the April town meeting warrant to take it by eminent domain. Kelly wrote that the town would rather buy from a willing seller, offered a conservation easement as an alternative, and asked whether a price could be agreed before April. He said the island should be “preserved in its natural state for the future.”
Dr. Washburn had said he would sell neither to developers nor to the town, the same answer his late mother had given decades earlier. This time talks followed, and in late March he offered the island for $2.75 million. Town Meeting voted to buy it in April, but voters overturned the purchase in May. The state finally took Washburn Island by eminent domain in June 1983, and in 1988 Waquoit Bay became a national estuarine sanctuary, now the Waquoit Bay Reserve.
Read the full story in the Falmouth Enterprise archive: “Buy Washburn Island For Town” →
This is CPWB’s summary of a news article. The full article and its photos are published by the Falmouth Enterprise. The page is in the Falmouth Public Library’s digital archive of the Enterprise.
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