Janet Knott

The Great Harbor Maritime Museum in Northeast Harbor

by Janet Knott

For tourists and locals alike, the Great Harbor Maritime Museum is a must see! A former firehouse, the building has been renovated to offer exhibits featuring the history of the surrounding bays, coves, and harbors. “Chilly Chronicles” documents the history of the ice industry, and out front, the mussel man has a lot of fans.

A life-size figure covered entirely in blue mussel shells standing outside the dark green doors of the Great Harbor Maritime Museum, beneath the gold Maritime Museum sign.
A visitor with a backpack studying a slender ice boat mounted on the gallery wall in the Chilly Chronicles exhibit, with historic winter photographs displayed behind it.
A museum wall of sepia and black and white photographs showing skate sailing and ice boating on frozen Maine lakes and ponds, with typed exhibit labels between them.
A rigged model schooner silhouetted in a museum window, its masts and standing rigging dark against the bright wharf outside.
The weathered white planked bow of a wooden skiff resting on a cradle in the museum gallery, its paint flaking back to bare wood along the seams.
Close view of a wooden lobster trap, its oak laths, knotted netting, and orange and white twine filling the frame.
A woman standing in the museum's open doorway with her hands on her hips, looking out at the clapboard storefronts and crosswalk of Main Street in Northeast Harbor.
Low islands and a wooded point across calm water at dusk, seen over a foreground of yellow tansy and seaweed covered ledge on the way to Northeast Harbor.
Yellow tansy blooming on the shore at low tide, with a chain of small spruce topped islands on the horizon under a pink and blue evening sky.
An American flag hanging from a porch post in late afternoon light, framing the rounded hills of islands across the water Downeast.