Lamoine State Park is the campground people book when Acadia's own campgrounds are full, and a fair number of them end up preferring it. Sixty-odd sites on a low grassy point on Frenchman Bay, looking straight across the water at the mountains of Mount Desert Island. It holds a 4.6 rating from 486 Google reviews. The catch is that the view is the short way and the drive is the long way.
The short version
Fifty-five acres at 23 State Park Road in Lamoine, about eight miles southeast of Ellsworth on the peninsula between Frenchman Bay and the Skillings River. Around sixty drive-in campsites, a day-use picnic area, a boat launch, a pier, and a shoreline of pebble and ledge.
What makes it work is the position. You are on the mainland shore of Frenchman Bay with an unobstructed line of sight to Cadillac and the rest of the Acadia skyline, roughly four miles away over the water. Sunrise comes up behind those mountains. It is the best campground view in the region and it costs a fraction of what a Bar Harbor room does.
Visiting and camping
Lamoine is run by the Bureau of Parks and Lands, the division of Maine's Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry that manages the state park system. Campsites book through the state's central reservation system on a rolling window ahead of the season, separately from the day-use fee collected at the gate, which is lower for Maine residents. Fees are on maine.gov.
This is a plain campground and that is the point. Sites are grassy and reasonably spaced, there are toilets and showers, and there are no hookups — tents, vans and small trailers rather than large rigs. Because it is state-run rather than federal, it sits outside the recreation.gov scramble that consumes Blackwoods and Seawall, so a site here is genuinely obtainable in a way that one inside the park often is not.
The road is the trade. Bar Harbor is four miles away across the bay and about twenty miles by car — back up to Route 3, out through Trenton, over the bridge, down the island. Budget thirty-five to forty-five minutes each way, more in August. If your plan is to be at a trailhead at sunrise every day, that commute adds up. Our guide to the Ellsworth to Acadia corridor covers where that drive slows down.
The other honest drawback: this is not a swimming park. The shore is pebble and ledge, the tide range is large, and Frenchman Bay is cold enough that most people get in once and treat it as an achievement. The point is a boat launch, a view, and somewhere flat to sleep.
The Navy was here first
The flat, cleared ground the campground sits on is not natural, and neither is the deep-water pier.
In the 1890s the United States Navy built a coaling station on this shore. The logic was straightforward: coal-fired warships had a limited radius and needed bunkering points along the coast, and Frenchman Bay offered deep, sheltered water within reach of the North Atlantic Fleet's summer grounds. This was also the height of the Bar Harbor summer-colony era, when the fleet's visits to the bay were a social event as much as a naval one.
The technology outran it almost immediately. Oil replaced coal within a couple of decades, and the station became obsolete infrastructure on a quiet shore. The land passed out of naval hands and eventually to the state, which is why a small rural town has a park with a pier, a graded shoreline and an unusual amount of open ground.
You can see the shape of it if you look. Parks assembled from private land tend to be irregular and wooded. This one is squared off and open, because someone cleared it to stack coal.
Lamoine itself
The town has no commercial center to speak of — a few farms, a shore road, houses. That absence is precisely why the park is quiet while campgrounds ten miles away are not: tourism development in Hancock County followed Route 3 onto Mount Desert Island and skipped the peninsula next door.
The one thing worth walking to is Lamoine Beach Park (4.7 from 468 reviews), a town-owned strip about a mile and a half from the park entrance with the same view and a boat ramp of its own. Marlboro Beach (4.6 from 43 reviews) is the other local shore access, smaller and less visited.
Nearby
- Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound (4.4 from 1,688 reviews) — six kilometers off on the Route 3 corridor, wood-fired boiling pots beside the road. The obvious dinner if you are not cooking.
- The Travelin Lobster (4.8 from 1,945 reviews) — seven kilometers away on the Bar Harbor road, rated higher than most sit-down restaurants on the island.
- Hulls Cove Visitor Center (4.5 from 2,546 reviews) — the main Acadia visitor center, and your first stop for passes and maps. Close over the water, thirty minutes by road.
- Helen's Restaurant of Ellsworth (4.3 from 2,329 reviews) — twelve kilometers north, a Downeast institution and the pie stop on the way in.
- Acadia National Park (4.9 from 24,003 reviews) — thirteen kilometers across the bay and the reason you are here. Nothing else in Maine draws a rating like that at that volume.
If a site at Lamoine is not available, our guides to Bar Harbor campgrounds and camping in Maine state parks cover the alternatives.
FAQ
How far is Lamoine State Park from Acadia National Park?
About twenty miles by road to Bar Harbor and the main park entrance, thirty-five to forty-five minutes depending on traffic through Trenton. Across the water it is four miles, which is why the mountains look close and the drive feels longer than it should.
Can you get a campsite at Lamoine State Park without booking ahead?
Sometimes, midweek and outside July and August, but it is not a plan. Sites are released through Maine's central reservation system on a rolling window and the waterfront row goes first. It is still far easier to book than the campgrounds inside Acadia, which is why people choose it.
Is there swimming at Lamoine State Park?
Technically yes, realistically no. The shoreline is pebble and ledge with a large tidal range, and Frenchman Bay water stays cold all summer. Come here for the boat launch, the view and the campsite rather than the swim.
Is Lamoine State Park a good base for visiting Acadia?
Yes, if you accept a daily drive. You get an easier reservation, a quieter night, a clear view of the park skyline, and Ellsworth's supermarkets ten minutes away instead of Bar Harbor prices. You give up being able to walk or shuttle to a trailhead from your tent.
