This New Hampshire island has no cars, no TV, and a Victorian hotel lit by candles

Star Island’s history runs deep

Seven miles out from the New Hampshire coast, a small granite island sits in the open Atlantic, halfway between two states and about a century behind the rest of the world. No cars.

No television. A Victorian hotel with rocking chairs on the porch and candlelight in the chapel at night.

Star Island has been drawing people out to sea since fishing boats crowded these waters in the 1600s, and it still does so today. The ferry ride alone tells you something is different out here.

Nine islands split between two states

The Isles of Shoals are a cluster of nine small islands seven miles offshore, and the state line runs right through the middle of them. Four belong to New Hampshire: Star, White, Seavey and Lunging.

Five sit on Maine’s side: Appledore, Smuttynose, Cedar, Malaga and Duck. Star Island is the second largest of the nine, and it’s the one you can actually visit.

The open Atlantic surrounds all of them, and on a clear day from the ferry, you can watch the islands rise out of the water one by one.

Captain Smith mapped it, fishermen built it

Captain John Smith first charted these islands in 1614 while exploring the New England coast. He called them “Smith’s Isles,” but that name faded fast.

The name that stuck, Isles of Shoals, likely came from the “shoaling” of fish, meaning the way they school in the waters around the islands.

By the mid-1600s, several hundred people had set up a fishing community here, making it one of the busiest ports on the East Coast.

The township of Gosport took root on Star Island in 1715, and the community held together until the American Revolution, when islanders were ordered to evacuate to the mainland.

The Oceanic Hotel hasn’t changed much since 1876

John Poor built the first Oceanic Hotel in 1873. It burned down two years later.

The rebuilt version opened in 1876 and has been standing ever since, making it one of the last original Victorian grand hotels on the New England coast to survive without a major renovation.

Walk through the lobby and you’ll find a grand piano, board games, jigsaw puzzles and chalkboards listing the day’s activities.

The wraparound porch runs the length of the building, lined with rocking chairs and open to the ocean on all sides. The nonprofit Star Island Corporation has owned and run the island since 1915.

Follow candlelight up the hill to the chapel

Every evening during the summer season, visitors gather at the foot of a hill and walk a winding path up to the Gosport Chapel carrying candle lanterns.

Inside, those lanterns hang on wall brackets and provide the only light for the service.

The chapel sits on the highest point of Star Island, and the stone structure you walk into was built in 1800, the third chapel on that same site.

The first went up around 1685, built from the timbers of a Spanish ship. The second was built in 1720 and later burned.

The candlelight procession follows the same path Gosport villagers once walked carrying whale-oil lamps.

The tallest gravestone in New Hampshire stands here

A granite obelisk rises more than 46 feet on Star Island, tall enough to catch your eye from the ferry.

It’s the Tucke Monument, honoring Reverend John Tucke, who served the island community from 1732 until he died in 1773. It’s also the tallest gravestone in the state of New Hampshire.

Down on the south shore, a second monument marks Captain John Smith’s connection to the islands.

Nearby, the Caswell Cemetery holds the remains of one of the island’s original fishing village families from the 1700s, and Vaughn Cottage preserves artifacts and artwork tied to the island’s long history.

Seabirds work the rocky shore all summer

Star Island’s landscape is granite ledges, tide pools and low grasses that hug the ground in the salt wind. Terns, barn swallows and cormorants work the shoreline and the surrounding water throughout the season.

The island sits on a bird migration route, so seasonal migrants stop here to rest and feed on their way through.

A few miles away, Duck Island is a protected wildlife refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, where harbor and gray seals haul out on the ledges.

Keep your eyes on the water during the ferry ride and you may spot seals before you even land.

43 acres with no cars and paths to everywhere

The whole island covers about 43 acres, and there are no vehicles on any of it.

Walking paths connect the hotel, the chapel, the monuments and the shoreline, so you can cover a lot of ground on foot without a map.

The Summer House gazebo sits in a spot where the view sweeps across the New England coast from Massachusetts all the way to Maine. Day visitors usually get three to four hours on the island.

Guided walking tours are available and take you through more than 400 years of island history if you want the full story.

The island runs on solar panels and rainwater

In 2011, Star Island launched the Green Gosport Initiative, a sustainability program built around the island’s limited resources. A solar array now covers up to 60 percent of the island’s energy needs.

Toilets flush with salt water to protect the freshwater supply.

Rainwater collects in a cistern, gets filtered and comes out of the tap for drinking, showers and laundry. Food waste goes into a compost system, and chickens are part of that cycle.

Glass bottles get crushed for fill material. Cardboard becomes compost and chicken bedding.

An island this far from the mainland has to make do with what it has, and Star Island does it carefully.

Celia Thaxter grew up in these waters

Celia Thaxter was born in 1835 and grew up on the Isles of Shoals because her father, Thomas Laighton, took a job as lighthouse keeper on nearby White Island starting in 1839. Later, Laighton built a hotel on Appledore Island.

Thaxter went on to become a celebrated American poet, and her writing about island life brought national attention to these remote outposts.

Her circle included painter Childe Hassam and writers Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sarah Orne Jewett.

Back on Star Island, Vaughn Cottage holds artifacts and artwork that connect to Thaxter and the literary world she moved through.

Her garden still blooms on the neighboring island

On Appledore Island, the largest of the nine Isles of Shoals, Celia Thaxter kept a small cutting garden that she turned into the subject of her 1894 book, “An Island Garden.”

Childe Hassam illustrated the book and painted the garden and island views many times over.

Today, the Shoals Marine Laboratory, run jointly by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire, maintains a faithful reconstruction of that garden on its original site.

Some of Thaxter’s original plantings still come up each season, including snowdrops and daylilies. Guided summer tours depart from the mainland if you want to see it.

The lighthouse you can see from shore belongs to New Hampshire

White Island sits just south of Star Island, and the lighthouse on it is the only offshore lighthouse in New Hampshire. The first light went up around 1820 and went into service in 1821.

The current brick-and-stone tower was rebuilt in 1859 and still flashes every 15 seconds, reaching up to 14 nautical miles out to sea.

Thomas Laighton, Celia Thaxter’s father, kept that light starting in 1839, and his family lived on the island with him. The lighthouse and the island around it are now a state historic site.

You can see it clearly from Star Island and from the ferry on the way out.

No cars, no TV, and meals at a shared table

Rooms in the Oceanic Hotel are simple, with shared bathrooms that match the building’s 19th-century bones. There’s no television, and electricity is limited.

Thousands of visitors come out each summer for day trips, personal retreats, and themed conferences covering art, music, history and nature.

Overnight guests eat family-style at communal tables in the hotel dining room, with locally sourced ingredients on the plate.

The island has changed very little in more than a century, and the distance from the mainland, seven miles of open ocean, keeps it that way.

Visit Star Island off New Hampshire’s coast

To get out to Star Island, you board a ferry in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, about a 10-mile ride, or from Rye Harbor, which puts you about five miles out.

Ferries run during summer months, and the island is generally open from June through September, with some programs running into late September and select fall birding dates into early October.

Day visitors get three to four hours on the island, and the ferry ticket covers the visitor fee.

Wear sturdy shoes for the rocky terrain, stay on the marked paths, and watch where you step since seagulls nest on the ground and poison ivy grows along the edges.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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