The island home of Arctic explorer Robert Peary, a member of the Class of 1877, is now among sites listed as national historic landmarks in Maine.

Eagle Island, which is part of the town of Harpswell, was the longtime home of Peary, who, on April 6 1909, realized his dream of many years when he reached the North Pole, writing in his journal: “The Pole at last!!! The prize of three centuries, my dream and ambition for twenty-three years, Mine at last….”

Eagle Island and the Frances Perkins Homestead in Newscastle, Maine, the ancestral home of the woman who served from 1933 to 1945 as U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, are two sites among nine new ones joining more than 2,500 historical landmarks nationwide.

Sen. Susan Collins, who delivered Greetings from the State at Commencement 2014, and Sen. Angus King H’07, called the two Maine locations “treasured symbols of our heritage.”