For years, Maine residents and visitors alike have flocked to Popham Beach in Phippsburg expecting to see a variety of shells, seabirds and rock outcroppings. This summer, visitors also encountered the occasional Christmas tree carcass strewn along sections of the beach’s uppermost sand dunes. These old trees are not the result of a holiday mishap — they were intentionally laid out to help rebuild the dunes after they were ravaged by harsh winter storms in December 2023 and January 2024.
Beaches in Maine are dynamic: shaped by wind and tides, they shift over time. But the changes at Popham have been particularly dramatic in recent years. The beach eroded, on average, roughly 92 feet annually between 2017 and 2025, according to data from the Maine Geological Survey’s beach mapping project, in part because of the migration of the Morse River, whose swift currents have cut into the dunes at the river’s edge. This, along with increasingly intense storms, has resulted in extensive changes to the shoreline of the beach, one of Maine’s most popular day-use state parks.
