Accessibility: 
Geographic coordinates: 44° 08' 30" N 68° 14' 42" W
Nearest town: Frenchboro. Located on a 265-acre island about five miles south of Mount Desert Island, on the approach to Blue Hill Bay.
Established: 1890. Present lighthouse built: 1890. Automated: 1986.
Height of tower: 42 feet. Height of focal plane: 67 feet.
Previous optic: Fifth-order Fresnel lens (1890); fourth-order Fresnel lens (1902). Present optic: VRB-25.
Characteristic: Red flash every 5 seconds.
Fog signal: One blast every 15 seconds.
Great Duck Island Light was established to help mariners headed for Blue Hill Bay and the Mount Desert area. The light went into service on December 31, 1890, and the first keeper was William F. Stanley. Three keeper’s dwellings were built side by side near the brick lighthouse, along with a shed and a fog signal building with a 1,200-pound bell. Only one of the keeper’s houses survives.
Keeper Nathan Adam “Ad” Reed, in charge from 1902 to 1912, and his wife, Emma, may hold the record for most children in a lighthouse family. Their seventeen children and the children of the other keepers, along with the children of the island’s fishermen, attended a little white schoolhouse on the island. The state of Maine provided a teacher. One of the Reeds’ older daughters, Rena, eventually got a teaching certificate in Castine and was able to teach her younger siblings in the island’s tiny schoolroom.
One of the last Coast Guard keepers was Larry Baum, who once commented, “The mental strain can be bad. We had guys who jumped into a peapod and tried to row to the mainland.” Most of the island was purchased by the Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy in 1984. The Nature Conservancy estimates that Great Duck Island supports 20 percent of Maine’s nesting seabirds. In 1998, the light station became the property of Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic under the Maine Lights Program. The keeper’s house is now occupied by students from the College of the Atlantic much of the year.
The College of the Atlantic’s ongoing research projects on the island include the monitoring of the large nesting gull population, as well as detailed study of the rare Leach’s storm petrel. For more information, contact the College of the Atlantic, 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609. Phone: 207-288-5015. Web site: www.coa.edu/html/greatduckisland.htm.
Fascinating Fact 
At one time, local people kept as many as 500 sheep on Great Duck Island, which got its name from an abundance of waterfowl.
The island is not accessible to the public. You can also arrange a trip with Sea Venture Custom Boat Tours (207-288-3355, www.svboattours.com) in Bar Harbor to see this and other area lighthouses.
