Islesford Historical Museum

Islesford Historical Museum is a small, one-and-a-half-story red-brick National Park Service museum beside the Town Pier on Little Cranberry Island. Its exhibits tell the story of the Cranberry Isles through fishing, schooner trade, summer residents and community life. If you're already planning a boat trip to Islesford, it's a good stop for understanding the island's working past.

You can reach the museum only by boat. Narrated tours from late May through September make about a 45-minute stop, so choose what you want to see first: the exhibits, the harbor, or a walk around Islesford. The NPS also describes mail-boat access from Northeast Harbor or Southwest Harbor; check current boat service and museum access before planning around it.

The displays cover changing island life, maritime work and the fishing industry. Visitors often single out the local family stories and the exhibits on how fishing changed across generations. The NPS lists restrooms, drinking fountains and a small bookstore, useful amenities on an island stop.

William Otis Sawtelle, a Haverford College physics professor who summered on Little Cranberry, founded the Islesford Historical Society in 1919 and began its collection. After he campaigned for a fire-resistant home for the growing collection, the museum building was constructed in 1927 and opened in 1928.

The collection began in the Blue Duck, a separate building associated with the museum. Built around 1850, it served as a ships' chandler selling provisions, supplies and equipment to working vessels, then continued as Islesford Market. Sawtelle bought it in the 1910s and gave it the Blue Duck name. It is a related historic building across from the museum, not another name for the museum itself.

Among the collection's unusual records are the papers of a schooner carrying Cranberry Isles cargo around the world for about a century, starting in 1796. Shipboard objects, lifesaving equipment, household and trade tools, and a 1779 Brown Bess musket and powderhorn connect the island's daily life to its maritime work.

The museum overlooks Hadlock Cove. From the waterfront, put the old wharf in front of the cove for a photo that connects the museum's collection to Islesford's maritime past.