Downeast Maine National Heritage Area

The setting sun over Downeast Maine National Heritage Area from a distance.

Photo courtesy of Brady Richards. Used with permission.

 

One of the newest National Heritage Area’s is the Downeast Maine National Heritage Area (NHA). NHAs connect and actively engage communities with natural, historic, and cultural sites through educational activities that promote awareness and foster stewardship of heritage resources that are most important to communities.

NHAs are places where the historic relationship between people and place has contributed significantly to the cultural and natural heritage of the Nation, and where that heritage story remains intact on the landscape. Saint Croix Island International Historic Site and Acadia National Park are both part of the NHA and are members on the management planning team.

The national importance of Downeast Maine was Federally recognized when the proposal to create the Downeast Maine NHA was passed by Congress and signed into public law on January 5, 2023. The designation includes Washington and Hancock Counties, whose landscape, economy, culture, resources, history, and ancestral stories are deeply intertwined. While the planning process continues, the whole plan is expected to be complete by January 2026.

The Downeast Maine NHA embodies a nationally important story about America’s northern Atlantic coastal frontier and international relations with eastern Canada and the Wabanaki Tribes. The landscape, people, and events of Downeast Maine have been and remain today examples of political, cultural, economic, and physical borders that create the unique experience of life on the easternmost edge of the United States. The cultural and natural borders and edges at interplay within this area of Maine, Wabanaki territory, and eastern Canada have helped to and continue to shape, supply, and inspire our nation.

Downeast Maine tells this story through an enduring natural-resources economy and nature-based way of life; naturally inspired and world-renowned tourism and arts; patterns of early American settlement; and deep relationships between the United States and Canada, and between Maine and the Wabanaki Tribes.

Learn more about Downeast Maine National Heritage Area.

Alternatively, learn more about National Heritage Areas and their connections with the National Park Service.