Mackworth Island: Falmouth's Shore Loop

The short answer

Mackworth Island State Park sits at the end of Andrews Avenue, off US Route 1 in Falmouth, just north of the Portland line. You park in a small lot on the island side of the causeway and walk a 1.25-mile perimeter trail that circles the island just inside the shoreline. It is wide, mostly level, packed gravel and roots — passable with a stroller if you work at it in two or three spots. Budget forty minutes, an hour if you go down to the water. A day-use fee is collected at the gate, and the gate opens and closes on a posted schedule.

Walking the loop

The first stretch faces back at the mainland; the far side opens onto Casco Bay, with the working end of Portland Harbor and the low green humps of the inner islands in front of you. Benches appear where the view earns them.

Short spurs drop from the trail to the shore. This is not a swimming beach — the intertidal zone is cobble, rockweed, and at low water a good deal of mud — but it is an excellent shore to poke around on, and the exposed flats at low tide are the best part of the visit. Kids do better here than on a sand beach.

The interior of the island is not yours to explore: the Maine Educational Center for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing runs a campus inside the loop. Stay on the perimeter path.

The dog cemetery and the fairy houses

Two things here are not like other state parks. The first is a burial ground for dogs — a circle of fieldstone walls set back from the seaward side of the trail, around a marker over the graves of Governor Percival Baxter's Irish setters. Maintaining it was a condition of the gift that made the island public, which means the State of Maine has a standing legal obligation to keep a pet cemetery mowed.

The second is the fairy house forest. In one wooded stretch, visitors build tiny shelters from bark, pinecones, twigs and stones. Park rules govern it: build only in the designated area, use only natural material already lying on the ground, take nothing living. If you have children, this is the thing they will remember, and it costs nothing.

Why the island is public at all

Percival Proctor Baxter was governor of Maine from 1921 to 1925 and spent the rest of a long life giving land away. He is best known for buying the Katahdin region parcel by parcel with his own money and deeding it to the state as Baxter State Park — over 200,000 acres, assembled across decades because the legislature refused to do it. Mackworth was the smaller, closer gift: his own island property, handed to Maine in the 1940s with instructions that it be kept as a public park and a sanctuary for wild birds and animals, and that his dogs' graves be maintained.

The name is older. It goes back to Arthur Mackworth, an English settler who held the island under a 17th-century land grant, when this stretch of Casco Bay was fishing and farming outposts rather than a suburb of anywhere. The causeway is a modern convenience; for most of the island's history you needed a boat. Baxter's deed also set aside part of the island for a school for deaf children, which is the quiet reason the park is a ring rather than a whole island.

Planning your visit

• Where: Andrews Avenue off US Route 1, Falmouth. The turn is easy to miss northbound.
• Fees and hours: A state park day-use fee applies; current rates and gate times are on the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands site.
• Dogs: One of the busiest dog walks in greater Portland. Leashes are required, and on a Saturday you will meet a lot of other dogs on a narrow path.
• Bring: Shoes with grip, a wind layer even in July, and a tide chart if you want the flats.

The honest drawback: the lot is small and there is no overflow. On a fine summer weekend it fills by mid-morning and cars queue on the causeway waiting for someone to leave. Come on a weekday, come early, or come in the shoulder season. Late October here, with the bay steel-gray and nobody around, beats August at eleven o'clock.

What else is close

• East End Beach, Portland (4.5, 781 reviews) — the city's swimming beach below the Eastern Promenade, across the water from the island's south shore.
• Eastern Promenade Trail, Portland (4.7, 237 reviews) — a paved waterfront path. Pair it with Mackworth for a morning of flat walking with two views of the same bay.
• Fort Allen Park, Portland (4.7, 1,995 reviews) — lawn and bandstand at the top of the Prom, and the best free viewpoint over Casco Bay in the city.
• Presumpscot River Preserve, Portland (4.8, 234 reviews) — a river gorge and falls a few miles inland, a different landscape entirely.
• Bug Light Park, South Portland (4.7, 2,518 reviews) — a squat, ornate harbor light on filled land, with the shipyard memorial beside it.
• Sicilian Table, Falmouth (4.6, 547 reviews) — the nearest good meal to the causeway.

For the islands you need a ferry for, see the Casco Bay islands or head straight for Peaks Island. If the loop leaves you wanting a real climb, Maine's best hiking trails starts where this one stops.

FAQ

How long does it take to walk around Mackworth Island?

The perimeter trail is about 1.25 miles and takes most people thirty to forty-five minutes at a walking pace. Add time if you drop to the shore or stop at the fairy houses, and figure an hour and a half with small children who want to build something.

Is there a fee to visit Mackworth Island?

Yes. It is a Maine state park with a day-use fee collected at the gate on the causeway. Rates follow the state park schedule and are posted on the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands site.

Can you bring a dog to Mackworth Island?

Yes, on a leash. It is one of the most heavily used dog-walking loops in the Portland area, which is worth knowing both ways: your dog will have company, and a narrow gravel path with constant oncoming traffic is not the place to work with a reactive one.

What are the fairy houses on Mackworth Island?

Small structures built by visitors from natural materials found on the ground — bark, twigs, stones, shells — in a designated wooded stretch of the loop. The park manages the tradition with rules about where to build and what to use. Nothing living may be picked or pulled, and houses belong in the marked area rather than scattered along the trail.