Baker Island: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Acadia National Park
Killion J and Marques R. 2025. Baker Island: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Acadia National Park. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 975506. National Park Service. NPS Northeast Regional Office, Boston, Massachusetts / CRIS-CL Database
Baker Island is located within the Town of Cranberry Isles and is part of Acadia National Park in Hancock County, Maine. The island is the smallest of the Cranberry Isles, measuring 3,350 feet north to south and 3,290 feet northwest to southeast, encompassing around 170 acres. The focus of this project is the northwestern part of the island and a narrow area alongside a path to the south shore. The study area, around forty-seven acres in size, was historically the inhabited and cultivated portion of the island and the location of the U.S. Government light station. Situated on the island’s high point (about ninety feet) is a brick and now-automated light tower owned by the U.S. Coast Guard and built in 1855. The abandoned keeper’s house stands adjacent to the tower, and nearby are an oil house, fuel house, and remnants of other structures and features that once supported operations at the light station. A spruce-fir and mixed conifer forest that was once managed by island inhabitants now obscures most of the light tower and covers much of the island, except for a narrow open area of old fields and pastures that gradually slopes from the light tower down to the north shore landing area. Within this space are several houses and structures built by the island’s early settlers, some of which now serve as summer residences through private in-holdings. Granite building foundations, wells, and walls, a small cemetery, and a few apple trees remain as a testament of the former community here. The island is open to the public, but access is limited to private and park ranger-operated boats that land just off the north shore. From here, where fish houses and the light station boat house once stood, a path winds its way past the remaining houses and ruins to the light tower, while secondary routes lead to the island’s cemetery and the rocky south shore. Through its extant features and structures, Baker Island represents a seafaring and agrarian way of life that characterized coastal Maine islands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Killion, Jeffrey; Marques, Rose
- Date of Issue
- 2025
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- ACAD
- Keywords
- Acadia National Park, Agriculture, Agriculture Subsistence, Agriculture/Subsistence, America Becomes A World Power 1865- 1914, American Exploration and Settlement, Architecture, Baker Island, Baker Island Light Station, Cemetery, Colonial Exploration and Settlement, Developing the American Economy, Engineering, Expanding Science and Technology, Exploration – Settlement, Expressing Cultural Values, Farming the Northeast, Historic Designed Landscape, Historic Vernacular Landscape, Leisure-Passive (Park), Lighthouse, Military Facility (Post), Outdoor Recreation, Peopling Places, Political and Military Affairs 1865-1939, Shaping the Political Landscape, Shipping and Transportation by Water, Ships-Boats-Lighthouses-And Other Structures, Single Family House, Technology (Engineering and Invention), The Farmer's Frontier, The Home Front, Transportation, Vernacular Architecture, World War II