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Overview of the Trail
Welcome
The Maine Island Trail is a 375-mile long waterway that extends from Isle of Shoals east to Machias Bay and includes several islands along the New Brunswick coast. The Trail winds along the coast through protected estuaries and bays, around magnificent and exposed capes, and among islands large and small. It is comprised of 185 islands and mainland sites available for day visits or overnight camping.
Maine’s complex and varied shoreline was once part of a landmass located many miles inland. When glaciers receded 11,000 years ago and the sea level rose, chains of mountains became strings of islands; former valleys became bays and estuaries. There are now more than 3,000 islands off the Maine coast and thousands of intertidal ledges. Roughly one-fourth of these islands have some vegetation. Humans inhabit 170 Maine islands, many of them only seasonally. Nearly all of the islands on the Maine Island Trail are wild and undeveloped, without facilities of any kind. Landing conditions vary with the tide: from sand and gravel beaches to rough, weed-covered rocks.
Please remember that sections of the Maine Island Trail can be potentially hazardous in small boats, even in fairly good conditions. Read the cautionary notes in this Guide carefully and heed them. As Joseph Conrad once observed, “I have known the sea too long to believe in its respect for decency.” We urge you to keep your safety and the safety of others uppermost in your mind at all times.
The mission of the Maine Island Trail Association is:
To establish a model of thoughtful use and volunteer stewardship for the Maine islands that will assure their conservation in a natural state while providing an exceptional recreational asset that is maintained and cared for by the people who use it.