Buying Land in Washington County, Maine

Maine's easternmost, genuinely rural county

Washington County -- nicknamed "Sunrise County" as the first place in the continental United States to see the sunrise -- had a 2020 Census population of 31,095, among the smallest of Maine's 16 counties, spread across roughly 2,563 square miles of land plus another 695 square miles of coastal and bay water. The county seat, Machias, had a 2020 population of just 2,060. This is genuinely remote Downeast Maine, bordering New Brunswick, Canada, with a real working economy built around fishing, lobstering, forestry, and agriculture rather than tourism.

Roughly half the county is Unorganized Territory

Washington County contains 35 unorganized townships, concentrated in the more interior half of the county away from the coast. The census-defined Washington Unorganized Territory area alone covers roughly 1,182.7 square miles of land with a population of about 1,207 -- against the county's total land area of roughly 2,563 square miles, that puts something close to half the county's land in the UT (this page's own rough calculation from those figures, not a single published percentage). As elsewhere in Maine's UT, the Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC) is the zoning and permitting authority there, not a town or the county.

Wild blueberry barrens: a real, working agricultural land economy

More than 60,000 acres of wild blueberry barrens -- the world's largest concentration of lowbush blueberry fields -- span Washington and neighboring Hancock counties, producing the large majority of the entire US wild blueberry crop. This is genuinely working farmland, not open land: most barrens are private, gated, machine-harvested commercial operations, fenced and managed on a two-year pruning cycle (each field is "on," meaning fruiting and worth harvesting, only every other year). If "blueberry land" is part of what draws you to a Washington County parcel, understand it as an active, capital-intensive commercial agricultural operation rather than casual pick-your-own acreage, and note that Maine's Farmland current-use tax program (requiring at least 5 contiguous acres in active agricultural use, with real agricultural income) can meaningfully affect the property's tax valuation and any future withdrawal penalty if you later convert it to non-agricultural use.

Jasper Wyman & Son, the state's oldest wild-blueberry processor and the nation's second-largest wild-blueberry grower, is headquartered in Milbridge, right in Washington County, and its Cherryfield and Deblois facilities process, freeze, and can fruit from roughly 10,000 to 12,000 acres the company farms directly in Maine plus supply from more than 400 additional growers, employing around 200 people year-round and 500 or more during the summer harvest. This isn't a footnote -- it's a real, named, sizable employer and land manager anchored specifically in this county. A 2026 industry-wide wave of divestiture by major growers facing drought and cost pressure has been reported, but the specific parcels involved (in towns like Whitefield, Northport, Union, and Somerville) sit in Lincoln, Waldo, and Knox counties, not Washington County -- worth knowing so you don't mistake general wild-blueberry-industry news for a Washington-County-specific land-market signal.

Two Passamaquoddy reservations, and a genuinely current land-status story

Washington County is home to the federally recognized Passamaquoddy Tribe's two reservations: Pleasant Point (Sipayik), a small peninsula community near Eastport and Perry with a 2020 population of 692, and Indian Township (Motahkomikuk), a larger reservation of roughly 23,000 land acres near Calais and Princeton with a 2020 population of 760. Like the Penobscot Nation to the west, the Passamaquoddy Tribe operates under the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act's unusually state-subordinate framework -- and in 2022, a state law (LD 906) gave the Tribe explicit authority to regulate its own drinking water under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, meaning the U.S. EPA rather than the State of Maine now has regulatory authority over drinking-water standards on Passamaquoddy territory. That's a genuine, recent, and specific jurisdictional shift, not a historical footnote -- and it followed a documented, decades-long drinking-water crisis at Pleasant Point that drew emergency legislative attention.

The Tribe has also been actively reacquiring ancestral land in recent years, including a Machiasport shoreline site bearing ancestral petroglyphs and a 140-acre island on Big Lake (known to the Tribe as Kci Monosakom) -- both confirmed, current transactions. See our dedicated tribal trust land status page for Washington County for what this jurisdictional and land-status framework means in practice for a buyer at or near either reservation.

What to check before buying land in Washington County

First, confirm organized-town versus UT status -- given how much of the county's interior is UT, don't assume based on distance from the coast alone. For a UT parcel, contact LUPC directly; for an organized-town parcel, contact that town's code enforcement office. If blueberry-barren land is part of the appeal, confirm current-use tax status and any active lease or management agreement with a commercial operator before assuming the acreage is simply vacant land. And for anything at or near Pleasant Point or Indian Township, read our dedicated tribal trust land status page before assuming ordinary fee-simple and county-permitting rules apply unchanged.