Freeport’s Desert of Maine forms new non-profit organization The Times Record Share The Desert of Maine, a Freeport tourist attraction founded in 1926, will partner with a newly-formed non-profit organization to offer artistic and educational programming. The Desert of Maine Center for the Arts and Environmental Education, which was incorporated in April, has hired Hannah Gathman, a former coordinating director of the Arts & Cultural Alliance of Freeport, as its first executive director. The Desert of Maine, a commercial entity, will continue to operate a campground and tourism ventures. The non-profit will organize and promote arts and cultural programming, educational workshops and school field trips on site in the Desert of Maine’s historic Tuttle Barn and on its dunes.