The Cranberry Islands are located off Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park. There are five: Great Cranberry, Little Cranberry, Sutton, Baker, and Bear. Little Cranberry, also known as Islesford, has a popular restaurant, art galleries, beautiful beaches, and mosquitos the size of your children. If you have a chance during your visit, you should spend a day on Little Cranberry, walking along the beaches, hunting for sea glass, or skipping stones. even though there are only 150 year-round residents, the summer population is much larger.
- Updated: 2 Oct 2024
The Village
Islesford is a popular destination because it has a restaurant and a thriving artist community. The island is fun to explore, either on foot or by bicycle. It is very small: 1.5 miles by .75 miles and highly walkable. There is a small village and roads to the beach. Maps are available for a small donation to the Neighborhood House.
Getting There is Half the Fun
If you don’t have your own boat, there are charters, coastal tours, and water taxis, or you can take the mailboat, with the option of taking a bicycle. It takes about 30 minutes to get to the town dock, and plan on staying 2-3 hours to see everything. Schedules are available from the Harbor Visitor Center and online, below are some budget numbers to give you an idea of costs.
Water Taxi – $150 round trip for about six passengers; times can be customized based on availability, and you can visit both islands for a bit more. There are a couple of options: Cadillac Water Taxi and Delight Water Taxi.
Mail Boat – $32 per adult round trip, six boats per day at various times, with a small charge for bikes; it is possible to visit both Great Cranberry and Islesford. The Beal & Bunker Ferry is out of Northeast Harbor, and the Cranberry Cove Ferry is out of Southwest Harbor and Manset.
What to See
Coast Guard Beach
Further afield, there is a rocky beach that leads to an old coast guard station, which is now a private home. The beach offers a beautiful view of Baker Island. It is tough to walk on the boulders, if you are going a distance, use the road, which runs parallel, for most of the walk, then go onto the beach. I hobbled down the beach, bashed my ankle with a rock, and stepped in some nasty, brown seaweed goo. This was all in the effort to get a different angle on the station house and Baker Island. I came back on the dirt road, which was much easier, but you can’t see the beach. No one else ventured down the beach.
Museums
The museum is operated by Acadia National Park from the middle of June through September, free of charge. There is a ranger on site who is available to answer questions. The museum opened in 1928 and had a major renovation in 2019. Its permanent collection consists of artifacts showing the islands’ history since 1760, when the first residents arrived. There are pictures of the early ferries, the Islesford Hotel, and the original families of the Cranberry Islands.
Friends of Acadia and Friends of the Islesford Historical Museum work with the park to create rotating, contemporary exhibits showing the lives of the year-round residents.
It is a non-profit organization housed in The Blue Duck, a historic structure built in 1852 to serve as a marine hardware store and now owned by Acadia National Park. They provide summer classes for children and adults in traditional wooden boat building and woodworking. The doors are usually open, so you can peek inside the classroom to see the progress.
Local Businesses
Art Galleries
Marian Baker is an artist and summer resident. She has a little shop and studio for her work and a few other artists. My favorite is Chris Breedlove, whose work reminds me of the inside of an oyster shell.
Danny and Katy Fernald manage a gallery for local artists. It is a short walk from the harbor, and there are signs leading the way.. There are many landscapes and local scenes, but these prints by Gail Collier were really fun. Katy suggested we go to the beach and create our own lobsters, but the task seemed overly ambitious.
Gail Collier's prints
Cranberry Isles Fisherman's Co-op
Most year-round residents are fishermen and work out of the commercial dock adjacent to the town dock. In the afternoons, you can watch the boats come in with their catch. It’s a busy place.
Our Day Trip
Usually we go to Little Cranberry for dinner, but in July 2021, four of us took the Cadillac Water Taxi from the Northeast Harbor to Little Cranberry on a beautiful, sunny Maine day. We left at 11 am and returned at 2:30 pm, which was slightly longer than we needed, so we had extra time to watch the lobster boats bring in their catch.
Although there is a restaurant, Islesford Dock Restaurant (IDR), it wasn’t open that day. I have been to IDR about half a dozen times since, and it did not make my Eating in Bar Harbor post because it is very inconsistent.
We brought lobster rolls from the food truck in the Northeast Harbor Marina: The Bucking Lobster. If you ask, the staff will pack the food appropriately for the boat: loose, in a reusable shopping bag, rather than in individual boxes, which are bulky. They do not accept orders in advance, so leave extra time for a line.
Arriving at Islesford, we noticed picnic tables overlooking the harbor and had an early lunch. We left the bag near the bike racks and took off to see the island. Later, when we returned, we used the bag to hold our purchases for the trip home. As it turned out, there was a food truck near the town dock, so bringing lunch is unnecessary. However, we didn’t know this then, and we didn’t want to be there without food.
It takes little time to navigate the island and visit the shops. We had plenty of time to soak in the scenery and for me to take more pictures – as I tend to do… The Cranberry Islands never disappoint, it was a perfect day on Little Cranberry.
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