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An independent guide, built to be useful
EastMachias.com is a free, community-run guide to East Machias and the towns around it. It is not a government site, it is not run by the town, and it does not sell anyone's data.
The short version
Why this exists
East Machias has a great deal to offer and almost no website. The town's own online presence amounts to a clerk's name, a phone number and a fax line. The restaurants have Facebook pages. The best information about where to eat, where to walk and when the festivals happen is scattered across a dozen different sites, most of them written for visitors passing through rather than for anyone who wants to spend a week here.
This site pulls that together into one place, with an honest line between what is official and what is not, and without the tourist-board gloss.
It is maintained by Alexander Wasson, a private individual, not by the Town of East Machias and not by Washington County. The site is not operated by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any government body. Where something is official — licences, taxes, vital records — the site points you at the office that actually handles it.
How it is put together
- Plain, hand-written HTML and CSS. No framework, no build step, no tracking scripts.
- Content is checked against published sources — the Maine Secretary of State, town and county sites, the National Register, and regional tourism bodies.
- Photographs are Creative Commons or public domain from Wikimedia Commons, with attribution on the credits page and on the images themselves.
- Distances on the day trips page are calculated from the village centre, not typed in from a brochure.
- The forecast card is fed by the free, key-free Open-Meteo service. The maps are OpenStreetMap. Both are the only outside services this site talks to.
- Listings are grouped for travellers: what to do, where to eat, where to stay, what to see, and the practicalities.
Corrections
Something wrong, out of date, or missing? Small-town contact details change and listings go out of season constantly, so mistakes are likely.
Please send them. The fastest way to fix a wrong phone number is a short email saying what it should be.
Sponsorship
Paid placements are labelled as advertisements, kept separate from the editorial content, and contain no tracking pixels. Nothing on this site is paywalled, and no listing is included or excluded because of who owns it.
Privacy in one line
No accounts, no forms, no analytics, no advertising networks, no tracking cookies. The full policy explains what your browser necessarily sends when it loads a page.
Ground rules
What this site will and will not do
It will
- Point you at the right officeEvery official contact links to the source it came from.
- Say when it is unsureSeasonal hours, closing businesses and things that need checking are flagged.
- Credit its sourcesEvery photograph and every data set is attributed and linked.
- Keep the signal highAnything not genuinely useful to a person visiting or living in East Machias stays out.
It will not
- Speak for the townNothing here is official guidance from East Machias or Washington County.
- Track youNo analytics, no ad networks, no pixel, no fingerprinting.
- Sell placements quietlySponsors are labelled. Editorial listings never are, and never are sold.
- GuessWhere a detail could not be verified, it is left out rather than invented.
Access
Built to be readable and usable
Navigation
Keyboard and screen reader ready
Skip links, visible focus rings, labelled controls, real headings, landmarks and table headers. The site follows WCAG 2.1 AA colour contrast in both themes.
Devices
Small screens and slow connections
System fonts only, so nothing blocks the first paint. Images are resized on the server and lazily loaded. The whole site is a few hundred kilobytes over a good connection.
Get in touch
Corrections, a missing listing, a question about the guide, or an interest in sponsoring — all welcome.
For anything the town needs — licences, taxes, records — the town office handles it on (207) 255-8598. The visitor info page has the rest of the local numbers.