Boon Island lies six and a half miles off Long Sands Beach, a small barren rock about 450 feet long, 150 feet wide, and about 14 feet above the sea at high tide, where a light flashes every thirty seconds to warn of rocky shoals. The island has been the scene of fifteen or more shipwrecks, beginning with the wreck of the coastwise vessel Increase, whose crew of three whites and one Indian survived a month on fish and gull's eggs, and it is best known for the wreck of the Nottingham Galley, which left London on September 25th, 1710, for Boston under Captain John Dean and ran aground there on December 25th, 1710, during a winter storm; starvation and harsh conditions led to cannibalism before ten survivors were rescued twenty-six days later. That ordeal led local fishermen to place a barrel of non-perishable food on the island for future castaways. The first lighthouse on Boon Island was commissioned in 1799, and after repeated storm destruction and damage to earlier wooden and replacement structures, the present granite lighthouse was built in 1852, rising 137 feet high, and lighthouse keeping there ended when the light was automated in 1978. Long Sands Beach stretches a mile and a half between the Nubble and Prebbles Point, with views of Nubble Light, Boon Island Light, and, on clear days, the Isles of Shoals. In May 1938, because Maine had few airports, the beach at low tide served as the landing strip for the first and only National Air Mail Service to the Town of York, an event celebrated locally with suspended school and a holiday. The beach was also the site of the wreck of the schooner Robert W during a severe northeast storm on February 12th, 1923, when its two-man crew lashed themselves to the rigging for hours before local residents rescued them, after which the stranded vessel gradually settled into the sand and was used as fuel for Fourth of July bonfires. York's big hotel era began after the arrival of the steam railroad in 1887, which replaced stagecoach connections and linked York to major rail lines through Portsmouth, followed two years later by the electric Portsmouth, Kittery and York Street Railway; this period lasted until the mid 1900s. Among the earliest guest houses on Long Sands Beach was the Sea Cottage, opened in 1871 as a stagecoach stop offering activities such as blueberry picking, beach marshmallow roasts, and steamed clams; later it became the Hotel Mitchell, where regular guests often returned season after season to the same rooms and dining tables, and eventually the property was sold to Seares Duarte, who opened the Anchorage Hotel on the site of today's Anchorage Inn.
