Downeast Maine: A Travel Guide

Where Downeast actually starts

The name is a sailing term, not a compass direction. Ships running from Boston to the eastern Maine ports sailed downwind on the prevailing southwesterlies while heading east — down, and east. That is why you go "down" to a place that is up and to the right on the map.

Where it starts is argued about locally. The broad definition puts the line at Ellsworth, where Route 1 turns away from the Acadia traffic. The stricter one puts it at the Hancock–Washington county line, past the Schoodic Peninsula, on the grounds that everything west of there is still in Acadia's economic orbit. This guide uses the broad line and flags which parts feel genuinely remote.

Stop	From Ellsworth	What it is
Ellsworth	—	The last real supermarket town
Schoodic Peninsula	50 min	Acadia's mainland section
Milbridge and Cherryfield	50 min	Blueberry barrens
Machias and Roque Bluffs	90 min	County seat, best beach out here
Cutler	2 hr	Bold Coast headland walks
Lubec	2 hr 15	Easternmost town, Quoddy Head
Eastport	2 hr 30	Easternmost city, huge tides

Ellsworth: the gateway, and your last supply stop

Ellsworth is where you buy things. It has the region's supermarkets, the hardware stores and the highest concentration of restaurants east of Bangor, and once you are past it the density drops off a cliff. Treat it as logistics rather than a destination and you will use it correctly.

That said, a few stops earn a pause. Knowlton Park (4.6 from 415 reviews) and Ellsworth Harbor Park and Marina (4.5 from 389) sit on the Union River in the middle of town. The Grand (4.7 from 133) on Main Street is the working theater and cinema, and the reason the downtown has evening life at all. Dorr Lobster Seafood Market (4.7 from 540) is the highest-rated seafood counter in town if you are cooking at a rental.

South of Ellsworth on the Bar Harbor road, Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound (4.4 from 1,688) is the wood-fired pound everyone stops at, and it is the single most-reviewed food stop between here and the border. Our Ellsworth page has the full rundown.

Schoodic Peninsula: Acadia without the queue

Cross the head of Frenchman Bay and you reach the only part of Acadia National Park on the mainland. Schoodic Point takes the open Atlantic head-on across a wide apron of pink granite cut through with black basalt dikes, and on a day with swell it does everything Thunder Hole is supposed to do, at ten times the scale, with a fraction of the people. The park road out to the point is one-way, which removes the passing problem entirely.

The Schoodic Institute (4.7 from 41 reviews) occupies a former Navy base at Winter Harbor and runs the park's research and education programs; its grounds and programming are open to visitors. Winter Harbor Light (4.9 from 29) is visible from the loop road but sits on private land — you look, you do not visit.

Eat at The Pickled Wrinkle in Birch Harbor (4.5 from 1,131 reviews), which is by a wide margin the most-reviewed restaurant in the whole Schoodic area and is named after a local sea snail. The Gallery in Winter Harbor carries a 4.9 from 84. Out at Corea, "Catch Your Dinner" Lobster Boat Tours holds a 5.0 from 707 reviews — an unusually large sample for a perfect score, and the strongest single endorsement of anything in this article. Full detail in our Schoodic Peninsula guide.

The long middle: barrens, Machias, and the Bold Coast

Between Schoodic and Machias, Route 1 crosses the blueberry barrens — low, open, rock-strewn ground around Cherryfield and Columbia Falls that produces most of the country's wild blueberries. In August it is green and busy with rakers. In late September it turns deep red, which is the single most underrated fall sight in Maine and gets a fraction of the attention that the mountain foliage does.

Roque Bluffs State Park (4.7 from 628 reviews) is the best beach east of Acadia and one of the odder ones anywhere: a curved pebble-and-sand crescent on cold open ocean, with a shallow freshwater pond directly behind the berm that is twenty degrees warmer. People swim in the pond and look at the sea.

Machias is the county seat and the practical base for this stretch; The Public House (4.6 from 205) is the town's best-reviewed room. South of it, the Cutler headlands carry cliff-top trails along the Bold Coast — several miles of open ledge above the water with no railings, no crowds and often no cell signal. Little River Lighthouse at Cutler holds a 5.0 from 23 reviews, a small sample from a place very few people reach.

Lubec and Quoddy Head

Lubec is the easternmost town in the United States and it looks it — a short main street on a narrow strait, half the buildings tied to a fishing and canning economy that has largely gone. It is quiet in a way that people either love immediately or find bleak by the second morning.

West Quoddy Head Lighthouse (4.9 from 1,488 reviews) is the reason most people come: the red-and-white banded tower at the easternmost point of the contiguous United States, and the only lighthouse east of Acadia with a four-figure review count. It sits inside Quoddy Head State Park (4.9 from 1,387), which also has the cliff trail south along the headland and a boardwalk over a raised peat bog — an ecosystem more usually found several hundred miles north. Both carry a 4.9, which is as close to unanimous as this dataset gets. Our Quoddy Head guide covers the trails.

From Lubec a bridge crosses to Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where the Roosevelt family's summer estate is preserved as an international park jointly run by both countries. It is Canada: you need a passport both ways and you should check border hours before committing to it as an afternoon. Our Lubec page has more.

Eastport and the Cobscook tides

Eastport is the easternmost city in the country, on an island connected by causeway, and its defining feature is water that moves. This is the outer edge of the Bay of Fundy system, and the tidal range here is measured in tens of feet — enough that the working waterfront ladders are three storeys long and the same view is a different place four hours later. Offshore, between Eastport and Deer Island, a large tidal whirlpool forms on the ebb and is visible from shore when conditions line up.

The town has a serious arts community for its size; the Eastport Arts Center carries 4.8 from 28 reviews and programs theater and music year-round. Cobscook Bay State Park in Dennysville (4.6 from 201) is the place to camp out here — sites on the water, and the tide does the entertaining. See our Eastport page.

Two stops on the way that people miss

• Tidal Falls Preserve, Hancock — 4.7 from 670 reviews. A reversing falls on the Taunton River where the tide runs the wrong way through a narrows twice a day, with a lawn above it to watch from. Free, ten minutes off Route 1, and better than it sounds.
• Downeast Scenic Railroad, Hancock — 4.3 from 446 reviews. A volunteer-run excursion train on restored track out of the Ellsworth area. Seasonal and limited-schedule; check before driving to it.
• Lamoine State Park — 4.6 from 486 reviews, with Lamoine Beach Park (4.7 from 468) next to it. Frenchman Bay frontage looking straight at the Mount Desert hills, twenty minutes from Ellsworth, and almost nobody there.

The honest drawback

Downeast is thin on services and it closes. Past Ellsworth the restaurant options in any given town can be counted on one hand, several shut entirely outside the summer months, and a Tuesday in May can leave you driving forty minutes for dinner. Lodging is the same story — a handful of inns and motels, booked out during the August weeks and shuttered either side of them. Fuel stations are far apart enough that you should fill up in Ellsworth or Machias rather than assuming.

Then there is the fog. This coast gets more of it than the rest of Maine, and it does not burn off politely by ten. A trip built entirely around views is a trip that can lose two days to a wall of grey. Build in the indoor and the near-shore options — the arts center, the museums, the shore walks that work in any visibility — and the fog becomes atmosphere rather than a wasted drive.

How long you need

Three nights minimum if you are going past Machias. The drive from Ellsworth to Lubec is two and a quarter hours on a road with towns and speed limits in it, and the return is the same, so a day trip to Quoddy Head from an Acadia base is five hours of driving for two hours of coast. Do not do that.

The routing that works: one night around Schoodic or Milbridge, one or two in Lubec or Eastport, then either loop back on Route 9 — the Airline, an inland road across empty country to Bangor — or retrace Route 1 with the stops you skipped. If you only have two nights, stop at Machias and turn around; you will have seen the barrens, the Bold Coast and Roque Bluffs, which is a genuine trip rather than a compressed one.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Downeast Maine begin and end?

The working definition starts at Ellsworth, where Route 1 leaves the Acadia traffic behind, and runs east to the Canadian border at Calais. A stricter local definition starts at the Hancock–Washington county line past Schoodic, on the argument that everything west of there still belongs to Acadia. Either way the eastern end is the same: Lubec, Eastport and the St. Croix River.

Is Downeast Maine worth visiting?

Yes, if you want coast without crowds and you are comfortable with limited services. Quoddy Head State Park and its lighthouse both carry 4.9 ratings from close to 1,500 reviewers each, which is the highest-rated pair anywhere in the region, and Schoodic Point delivers open-Atlantic surf on granite with none of the Park Loop Road congestion. It is not the trip for anyone who wants a walkable town with twenty restaurants in it.

How far is Lubec from Bar Harbor?

Roughly three hours each way by road, because the route runs inland around Cobscook Bay rather than following the coastline. That makes Lubec a poor day trip and a good overnight. If you only have one day to spend east of Acadia, go to the Schoodic Peninsula instead — it is under an hour from Ellsworth and part of the same national park.

What is the best time of year to visit Downeast Maine?

Late August into the third week of September. The fog is less persistent than in early summer, the water is at its warmest, the blueberry barrens around Cherryfield turn red in September, and most businesses are still open. October brings foliage but a rapidly shrinking list of open kitchens, and by November much of the visitor economy east of Ellsworth has shut for the year.