Schoodic Peninsula

Containing the only portion of Acadia National Park on the mainland, the Peninsula covers a little over 2,000 acres within the Park. The area features granite headlands, rocky beaches, and spruce-fir forests. Although the scenery is similar to that of Mount Desert Island, the coast of the Schoodic Peninsula is far more secluded and infrequently traveled, so visitors may feel as if they have the Park to themselves. John G. Moore, a Maine native and Wall Street financier, once owned much of the Peninsula. In the 1920s, his heirs donated the land to the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations with the stipulation that the land be used as a public park and for uses that promoted biological research. In 1929, legislation allowed the National Park Service to accept land on the Schoodic Peninsula as an addition to Acadia, and soon after, the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations donated the former Moore property (2,050 acres) to the National Park Service (NPS). In the 1930s and 1940s, some of the land was transferred to the U.S. Navy to use as a radio communication station, but it was transferred back to the NPS in 2002. In 2017, the region added an 8.3-mile bike path, 2 new trails (lower Harbor Trail & Buck Cove Mountain Trail), and a substantial new campground (Schoodic woods campground). If you are already on Mount Desert Island, it will take you about an hour to drive to the Schoodic Peninsula. In the summer, a ferry travels between Bar Harbor and Winter Harbor, and the Island Explorer bus provides transportation from the ferry terminal to the Schoodic section of the Park, Prospect Harbor, and Winter Harbor.