Of the roughly 700 lighthouses in the United States, Maine is home to 65 of them. When you see the state’s rugged coastline, you’ll quickly understand why so many are necessary- the coastal area is quite vast, rocky, and shallow which made early navigation a dangerous endeavor!
As the lighthouses along the coast are beautiful, you’ll likely want to pick a few to see during your visit. It doesn’t take long after starting to plan that you notice that some lighthouses in Maine are far more accessible than others.
This goes back to the size of the state’s coastline. While Maine is only about 300 miles north to south, the coastline actually covers an impressive 3,478 miles thanks to the many inlets and bays you can find along the way. To give some context to this figure, that is like driving from Bar Harbor to San Francisco with having a few miles to spare (50 hours drive time at highway speeds). So what may appear to be a short detour down a peninsula could become a decent drive outright and is why we think advanced planning is a must.
As we were traveling between Portland and Bar Harbor when we wanted to see some lighthouses, we had to recognize that we were already in for quite the long day driving on US-1 on its own. As such, we planned our lighthouses around those that were most accessible in an effort of time. Couple these with a few you can see just outside of these two cities directly and we ended up seeing seven Maine lighthouses.
In this one, we wanted to share those lighthouses!
We’ll start in South Portland and work our way north up the coast to Bar Harbor as you scroll through this list.
