Bradbury Mountain State Park: Hikes & Camping

The short version

The park straddles Route 9 at 528 Hallowell Road in Pownal, midway between Portland and Lewiston-Auburn. West of the road is the mountain, the campground and the picnic ground. East of the road is a large network of shared-use trails.

It is open all year, morning to sunset, and day-use fees are collected year-round rather than only in season — one of a handful of Maine parks that never really shut.

The climb

Two ways up, very different experiences. The Summit Trail is direct: about a quarter mile, steep, rooty and rocky, on top in fifteen or twenty minutes. The Northern Loop runs roughly a mile at a far gentler grade — the better choice with young children, older knees, or after rain, when the Summit Trail's ledges get slick.

The top is open granite. You look east and southeast over farmland and forest to Casco Bay, with the ocean visible on a clear day. It is a modest hill delivering an outsized view, which is the whole trick of the place.

Every spring the summit becomes a research station. A raptor count runs from the ledges through the migration, mid-March into May, staffed daily and sponsored by a local birding shop; totals run into the thousands of birds a season — broad-winged hawks, ospreys, eagles, harriers. Climb on a good April day with a south wind and you will find someone up there with a clicker, happy to tell you what is overhead.

Camping, biking and winter

Camping. Thirty-five sites with showers, a playground and a group picnic shelter, no hookups — standard for the Maine system. Reservations go through the state's central service on a rolling window ahead of arrival. Being this close to Portland and Freeport makes it one of the more contested campgrounds in southern Maine; summer weekends are not a walk-up proposition.

Mountain biking. The real specialty. The trails east of Route 9 are among the best-known riding in southern Maine, and Bradbury is the only state park in the region with shared-use trails open to bikers, horseback riders and snowmobilers together. Expect all three.

Winter. The park runs cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and snowmobiling, with snowshoe rentals available, and the campground stays open through the cold months — genuinely unusual in Maine.

The honest drawbacks. Two. The parking lot is the constraint on everything: on a fine weekend afternoon between spring and foliage season it fills, and there is no overflow worth the name. Arrive before ten or after four. Second, the shared-use model means the east-side trails carry bikes at speed, and walkers who want quiet woods will be happier on the west side of the road.

Grapes, feldspar and a rope tow

Bradbury Mountain is one of Maine's five original state parks, and the way it became one says a lot about the 1930s.

The land was bought from its owners between 1936 and 1938 — not by Maine but by the federal government, under a Depression-era soil conservation and land utilization program that acquired farmland which had stopped paying its way. Works Progress Administration crews built the infrastructure in 1939, and the property passed to the state that same year. The same machinery produced Mt Blue State Park up in Weld. A remarkable share of Maine's public land is, at bottom, a record of which farms failed.

What the farms left behind is still legible on the hillside. In the early 1800s the Cotton family grew grapes here, on terraces cut into the south-facing slope, and the terracing survives — an odd thing to walk across in Maine woods, and the sort of detail that makes more sense once you know a vineyard was the reason.

Later the mountain was mined. Through the 1920s feldspar was quarried near what is now the ball field, shipped out to be ground into crockery and china. Pegmatite in this part of Maine yielded feldspar, mica and gem tourmaline, and small workings dot the region.

Then, in the 1940s, the park ran downhill skiing with a rope tow. On a 485-foot hill. It is easy to be superior about that until you notice the pattern: the same modest hill has been repurposed decade after decade for whatever people needed. Vineyard, mine, ski area, hawk-count station, bike park. It is still doing it.

Nearby

• Desert of Maine (4.5, 1,145 reviews) — three miles south in Freeport. Glacial silt exposed by 19th-century overfarming: thematically the same story as this park. See our Desert of Maine guide.
• Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park (4.8, 1,431 reviews) — seven miles southeast. The salt-water counterpart: shore path, osprey, no hill. See our Wolfe's Neck guide.
• L.L. Bean Store Discovery Park (4.7, 178 reviews) — five miles southeast, in the middle of Freeport's shopping district.
• Winslow Memorial Park (4.6, 604 reviews) — seven miles south, a town-run park with a beach and campground on Casco Bay. See our Winslow Park guide.
• Pratt's Brook Park (4.7, 102 reviews) — five miles south in Yarmouth. Quiet town trails, good when Bradbury's lot is full.
• Mast Landing Audubon Sanctuary (4.4, 70 reviews) — five miles southeast in Freeport. Easy walking beside a tidal mill stream.

For more, see our guide to camping near Portland and the Portland city page.

FAQ

How long does it take to hike Bradbury Mountain?

Fifteen to twenty minutes up the Summit Trail, a steep quarter mile, or about half an hour on the Northern Loop, roughly a mile at an easy grade. Most visitors are up, down and back at the car inside an hour, which is why it works as a stop rather than a day.

Is Bradbury Mountain State Park good for young children?

Yes, with one caveat: take the Northern Loop rather than the Summit Trail. The direct route is short but genuinely steep and rooty, and slippery when wet. The gentler loop reaches the same open ledge, and there is a playground and picnic area at the base.

Does Bradbury Mountain State Park have camping?

Thirty-five sites, with showers, no hookups, and an unusual year-round season. Reservations run through Maine's central state park service on a rolling window. It is one of the closest state park campgrounds to Portland, so midsummer weekends fill early.

Can you mountain bike at Bradbury Mountain?

Yes, and it is one of the better-known riding areas in southern Maine. The network east of Route 9 is open to bikes, horses and snowmobiles as shared use — the only state park in southern Maine set up that way — so ride expecting to meet people on foot and on horseback.