Wild Blueberry Land, the 26-foot blueberry-shaped geodesic dome along Route 1 in Columbia Falls that advertises and educates about Washington County’s iconic crop, is for sale.
It’s also a uniquely vulnerable site with historic significance to the state, according to Maine Preservation, which included it this week on its annual list of the most endangered historic places.
The dome housing a blueberry museum and gift shop was built in 1999 by Dell and Marie Emerson, owners of Wescogus Wild Blueberries just over the town line in Addison.
“A day doesn’t go by that someone doesn’t tell me a wonderful story about Wild Blueberry Land,” Marie Emerson said Wednesday, adding that she sees visitors taking photos there daily, even when it’s closed. “It means a lot to the people that have visited … and people love the building.”
For more than 25 years, the blueberry has been a beacon along the county’s tourist route to share their small-farm values and educate visitors about the crop’s history. Now, its future is in question as the Emersons seek new stewards and aim to preserve the unique dome structure.
The couple have been longtime staunch advocates for small farmers amid consolidation of wild blueberry land ownership and processing operations. Wild blueberries are a major part of the economy and culture in Washington County, which produces almost all of the country’s domestic lowbush blueberries.
Dell Emerson spent 53 years working at the University of Maine’s blueberry research station in Jonesboro, managing it during a 30-year period that roughly quadrupled yields, and Marie Emerson is a chef and educator. Wild Blueberry Land began as an idea for a farmstand to sell fruit from their nearby farm and grew into the dome with a gift shop and museum about wild blueberry history.
Wild Blueberry Land represents their life’s work, Marie Emerson said Wednesday.
The dome is structurally sound, but the threat to its future lies in a transition of stewardship, Maine Preservation said in a listing released this week. Wild Blueberry Land is one of four locations on its annual list of the most endangered historic places in the state, and much younger than most of them, opening in 2001.
This year’s other sites are early 19th-century tombs in Eastport’s Hillside Cemetery, the five-story brick Handley Hall in Augusta that houses the University of Maine at Augusta’s architecture program — which the university wants to leave, stirring controversy — and an 1839 house across from Bath Iron Works that the shipyard offered to sell for $1 on Facebook earlier this year to anyone who could move it.
The nomination-based endangered list aims to bring attention to such places and boost efforts to preserve them, according to Maine Preservation.
The Emersons helped found the Wild Blueberry Heritage Center nonprofit a decade ago for future management of the site and further its mission, which had expanded onsite programming and been key to property management until a recent vote by its board to dissolve, according to Maine Preservation.
Its funds went to the Passamaquoddy Nation for museums in Sipayik and Motahkomikuk, according to the preservation group, which noted the Emersons’ ideal buyer would be the Passamaquoddy Nation, which originally inhabited and cared for its land.
The geodesic dome design comes from R. Buckminster Fuller, a summer resident who popularized them as a form of accessible housing that was comfortable, efficient and affordable — which the Emersons also promote. The blueberry is further a rare Maine example of “programmatic architecture,” or buildings built to resemble real-life objects.
The couple is likely to sell it in one of three configurations: just the building with two acres for some other use, the building along with the Wild Blueberry Land business and trademarks to remain as it is today, or both plus some of the couple’s blueberry acreage for a small farmer.
Emerson declined to discuss potential prices, saying she preferred interested buyers to call their farm. The building is not currently listed online, but a for-sale sign is posted in person, she said.
“If it doesn’t stay Wild Blueberry Land, that’s okay too,” she said, as long as the building is maintained. “It’s just special, and people love it.”
