Land Use on New Island

 

No land is free, but it can be used to benefit nearly everyone. Alison's Beach, shown above, on the island's East Coast Path, has been a favorite swimming and body-surfing stop along the Path. Food and drink stands pop up in the summer, and camping is popular here, especially during the Wave Festival in January. This area has never been "owned " or "developed" by any individual or corporation, and cannot be under New Island law. But someone could settle here if they demonstrated a specific and beneficial need, and an intention to care for what land they actually use.

When the first shipwrecked convicts from England and Ireland realized they just might survive on this unknown island, they soon decided that the land they saw around them would remain forever "in common". As it happened, most of these convicts were women who keenly felt the pain of dispossession of the land they had lived on and worked for generations. When they and their families were evicted during the infamous "Clearances" in the late 1700s, they painfully found out who actually owned the land that had supported them. Now homeless, they resorted to stealing food and other minor crimes which won them their fate to be sent to Australia.

On this wild yet uninhabited place, these women agreed to claim only that much land they would reasonably use for shelter and sustenance - a house and whatever space around it from which to make a living. They would later create plat maps and grant deeds for anyone who could demonstrate the intention of caring for what land they claim.

These ideas came about in a series of agreements made by the tribes that emerged in the first decade of settlement. By 1810, the Beastey Bay tribes had created the first laws to keep the island's land in common.

Of course there was dissent, especially among some members of the ships' crew and a later group of  free settlers under the influence of an entrepreneur named James Denby. This group became stranded off of the settlement of Flynn's Beach (Now Alison) in 1816 when their ship was blown north from their course to Australia. When they met the Beastey Bay Tribes, Mr. Denby had no intention of signing on to the Land Agreement. But after his ship was  mysteriously burned, he led his group (or most of them) north across the island where they founded the settlement of New London (now Putney).

So today, some land in and around the city of Putney is still private, but even in the city, there are tribes whose land is held in common and unclaimed areas and vacant lots are still available to anyone who can demonstrate their use in a viable way.

The rest of New Island's 12,000 square miles remains available, whether within a tribe, in a town, or in the open country. The only unavailable lands are within the boundaries of the Nature Preserves.

More about Tribes, later!