Located in Tremont, Maine on Mount Desert Island
Bass Harbor Lighthouse, or as the National Registry of Historic Places lists it, Bass Harbor Head Light Station, is one of the easier lighthouses in Maine to visit. It’s the only lighthouse accessible by car in Acadia National Park. This makes it a very crowded tourist destination with an estimated 180,000 visitors per year.
I planned my trip to visit Bass Harbor knowing I would have to beat the toursists there if I didn’t want to have countless strangers featured in my refernce photos. We went up to Bar Harbor on the eastern side of Mount Desert Island in early May of last year. It was the perfect time. A lot of the hotels and businesses that close down for the Winter were just opening for the season so it was still quiet, but there were places to stay and eat. After spending the night at a fun and charming inn called The Queeen Anne’s Revenge, we headed out early to exlpore the east half of the park before we headed to the lighthouse.
The eastern side of Acadia National Park features miles of old carriage and motoring roads established by wealthy Guilded Age families who spent their summers in on the island. They built grand estates they called “cottages.” A few of the structures still exist. One of the roads goes up to the top of Cadillac Mountain – the tallest peak on the eastern seaboard. This was a must see stop on the way to our destination.
To get to Bass Harbor Head Light Station from Bar Harbor you have to take route 233 westward so you you can get around Sommes Sound, a large inlet that effectively divides Mount Desert Island in half. We then took route 102 which goes through Southwest Harbor where you can choose to stay on 102 which takes you further west through the town of Bass Harbor, or you can take 102A which keeps you on the western side of Sommes Sound. 102 and 102A essentially form a loop around the southeast side of the peninsula between Tremont and Southwest Harbor. You turn off 102A onto Lighthouse Rd, which is a long narrow road that eventually brings you to a parking lot.
There are two trails you can take from there. One goes up to the lighthouse and its grounds. The other goes down a through the woods untily you get to a network of wooden stairs which brings you down to a narrow rocky shoreline. The view from here looks up at the lighthouse majestically perched atop a cliff, framed by dark evergreen trees. There are also large boulders you can hop on to get the most dramatic photos of the lighthouse.
Despite our arriving early in the season there were still a lot of tourists. Many visitors were climbing on the rocks to get better shots. One flip-flop-wearing woman was ill-prepared for rock hopping and kept slipping off a wet boulder. Fortunately she was unharmed, but it was an illustration of how dangerous the coastline can be.
About Bass Harbor Head Light Station
Bass Harbor became important because it was a naturally well-protected harbor on the southwest tip of Mount Desert Island. This “very good harbor” got the recommendation for a lighthouse by Maine’s lighthouse inspector, W.B. Franklin, in 1855. The United States Government allocated $5000 to the land purchase and construction in 1856. A granite bluff at the head of the harbor was chosen as the site. The lighthouse was finished in 1858 for a final cost of $4,983.35. The remaining $16.65 was returned.
Bass Harbor is one of the most profitable lobstering ports in Maine and is home to the Swan’s Island and Frenchboro Maine State Ferry services.
The lighthouse was automated in 1974. Ownership of the lighthouse and two-and-a-half acres was transferred from the US Coast Guard to the National Park Service in 2017, making Bass Harbor Head Light Station a part of Acadia National Park. Even though the lighthouse is technically part of the park, there is no admission needed to visit it.
About the Painting
The painting is 16″x12″ gouache on Arches watercolor rag mounted on cradled panel.
This was another experimental painting where I was inspired to use a limited palette of only 3 colors based on the rocks and sky: phthalocyanine blue, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, plus black and white. I call this an earthy version of the CMYK subtractive printing model that I’ve adapted for many of my other paintings.
Normally I like to stay away from the most popular views of lighthouses when I develop my compositions, but sometime the most popular view is popular for a reason. In this case I leaned into the dramatic cliff view from the base of the bluff and focused on the ochre’s, siennas, and blues of the scene.
The original painting has already been sold, but prints are available at my online gallery, FineArtNewEngland.com.
Sources
Most of my information about the history of Bass Harbor Head Light Station comes from my favoite lighthouse-related website: LighthouseFriends.com.
Other sources: Wikipedia, National Park Service.