Bear Island Lighthouse
There has been a lighthouse since 1839 on Bear Island, smallest of the Cranberry Islands at the entrance to Northeast Harbor.
There has been a lighthouse since 1839 on Bear Island, smallest of the Cranberry Islands at the entrance to Northeast Harbor.
The area’s only lighthouse actually on Mount Desert Island, the 32-foot Bass Harbor light was built in 1858 to guide mariners around the southwestern end of the island and in and out of Blue Hill Bay.
Bar Harbor gets its name from the sand and gravel bar that blocks the western end of the harbor when it’s exposed for a few hours on either side of low tide.
The southernmost of the Cranberry Islands, about four miles from Mount Desert Island, Baker was settled in the early 1800s by William and Hannah Gilley and their three children.
Local legend says that the artists who visited Mount Desert Island beginning in the 1830s named these four islands in Frenchman Bay, just offshore from Bar Harbor.
Visitors to Acadia National Park often don’t realize that when they drive off the mainland in Trenton, and out over the Mount Desert Narrows, they first cross another, smaller island before reaching Mount Desert Island.
Egg Rock, at the entrance to Frenchman Bay, has been known as a home for seabirds since it received its name from French explorers in the late 1600s.