The U.S. Navy closed its Skaggs Island Naval Communications Center in September of 1993; primarily because satellites and other communications devises made the site obsolete. The high cost of maintaining the 60-acre top security and aging campus and outlying buildings on the 3300-acre property was also prohibitive. The property is still owned by the Navy. Plans had been underway for many years to transfer the property to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Refuge System. Those plans may not materialize, but we still hope that the property will fall into public ownership of a natural resource managing agency. In the meantime, just once a year, during our Festival, we make every effort to ensure public access to the remarkable site known for its superb hawk watching.

We conduct a registration and lottery selection for this outing during the annual Flyway Festival due to the huge demand for few openings. Because of the holidays, many people don’t learn about the opportunity till they read about it in a newspaper article late in January, or receive our Festival schedule in the mail in mid- January. You may question why not schedule everything earlier in the year and advertise the Festival in the Fall, do the registration then, and then forget about it till January? Good idea, and one day, we hope that it will be that easy. We also hope that the Island will one day be much more accessible for all. For now, the more than 350 people who learn about the opportunity in the months or days leading up to the Festival get an equal chance at going. And, if you have been before, you get a chance to possibly go again.