A longtime Scarborough resident who settled here in 1993 wrote recently on the town's own news page about a small moment on the Eastern Trail this summer. A family on bikes, clearly visiting, stopped to ask her to take their photo. When she said yes, she lived nearby, the mother told her how lucky she was, how beautiful Scarborough was, how kind everyone had been on their first trip to Maine.
That exchange happened on the Eastern Trail sometime this summer, before this week closed the last piece of the puzzle between South Portland and Saco. On August 6, a Thursday, the Town of Scarborough and the City of South Portland cut the ribbon on a new 1.6-mile stretch of the Eastern Trail connecting the Wainwright Sports Complex in South Portland to the Nonesuch River crossing in Scarborough. For the first time, there are 16 continuous off-road miles running from Bug Light Park in South Portland to downtown Saco, with no stretch of road riding required in between.
That's the headline. The detail worth sitting with is what the new bridge crosses. The Nonesuch River is one of two rivers, along with the Dunstan, that feed freshwater into Scarborough Marsh before the Atlantic's twice-daily tides push back in. A few miles downstream from that new crossing, Maine Audubon guides have spent the summer leading canoe tours along the Dunstan River, through the same marsh system the Nonesuch feeds. That paddling season is on its own clock. The center closes for the year after Labor Day weekend, which falls on September 7 in 2026.
So the town gets two versions of "closing" inside the same few weeks. One gap closed by connecting. One season is about to close by ending. Residents who only track one of these stories are missing the other half of what's actually happening in Scarborough right now.
Fourteen Years to Close 1.6 Miles
The Close the Gap fundraising campaign started in 2012. It took more than a decade of fundraising, design work, permitting, and land negotiations before construction finally began in June 2025, built by Shaw Brothers. The project cost $7.5 million, paid for by the Town of Scarborough, the City of South Portland, the Maine Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and individual and corporate donors through the Eastern Trail Alliance.
Scarborough Town Manager Tom Hall was there at the beginning and still there for the ribbon cutting. Speakers at the ceremony called him "the last man standing" on a project that outlasted a pandemic, several changes in town leadership, and multiple economic cycles, according to Town Councilor Cory Fellows.
South Portland Mayor Elyse Tipton put it simply.
"The gap is gone!"
Eastern Trail Alliance Interim Executive Director Eliza Alexander described the new segment as connecting communities through "a beautiful, natural trailway" for runners, walkers, and cyclists. The full Eastern Trail, once complete, will run 65 miles from Kittery to South Portland as part of the East Coast Greenway, a route that eventually reaches all the way to Key West. The August 6 opening came roughly 15 months ahead of the original schedule, according to the Portland Press Herald's coverage of the ceremony.
The Marsh Doesn't Wait for Anyone
Scarborough Marsh is the largest salt marsh in Maine, a 3,100-acre estuary of tidal creeks, freshwater marsh, and upland that the state began acquiring in 1957. Maine Audubon has run the nature center on Pine Point Road since 1972, offering canoe and kayak rentals, guided tours, and a nature trail through a landscape that shifts completely depending on the tide.
That last part matters more than it sounds like it should. Audubon's own visitor guidance points paddlers toward the marsh's tide charts before they go, because the same channel that's an easy float on an outgoing tide can be a real fight against an incoming one. This isn't a park with a fixed schedule. It runs on the moon.
The center is open seven days a week through the summer, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., but that window is closing. After Labor Day weekend, the center shuts down for the season and doesn't reopen until spring. Counting from today, that leaves five weekends: this one, August 15 to 16, August 22 to 23, August 29 to 30, and the Labor Day weekend of September 5 to 7, which is the last stretch before the doors close.
One of the marsh's scheduled events falls squarely inside that window. Maine Audubon has a guided kayak tour on the calendar for August 28, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., priced at $20 for a nonmember adult and $12 for a child. It's a small, specific thing, but it's also one of the last chances this year to be led through the marsh's back channels by someone who actually knows them.
What the Overlap Actually Looks Like
Put those two facts next to each other and a Scarborough weekend this month starts to look different than it did a month ago.
- Bike or walk the newly connected Eastern Trail, which now runs without interruption from South Portland's Bug Light Park through Scarborough to downtown Saco, crossing the Nonesuch River on the bridge that opened this week.
- Head down to Pine Point Road for one of the Audubon Center's remaining guided paddles or a self-guided canoe rental, timed against the posted tide chart rather than the clock.
- Close the loop on Sunday morning at the Scarborough Farmers' Market, held at 259 US Route 1, right at the Town Hall lot, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., running through October.
None of these three things individually is new information. What's new is that they now sit on top of each other for exactly one month. By the time the Audubon Center locks up after Labor Day, the trail will already have settled into being simply the trail, a permanent 16-mile fact rather than a ribbon-cutting story. The marsh will go quiet until spring. The farmers market will keep running into fall, but the paddling window that makes the marsh a working part of a Scarborough weekend, rather than just a view from the trail, will be gone until next Memorial Day.
Two Kinds of Closing
It's a strange coincidence that the same word describes both stories happening across the same marsh system this month. One kind of closing means a gap in something got connected after fourteen years of work. The other kind means a season of access is winding down on a timeline nobody in town controls, because it never has.
Neither story is really about real estate. They're about what a Saturday in Scarborough actually contains right now, if you know to look for both halves of it. That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a portal listing, and it's part of why living here reads differently than researching it from somewhere else.
If you're weighing a move to Scarborough, or you already live here and want a read on how a specific street or neighborhood fits your plans, Michael Mahoney can walk you through it. Let's Connect.
