Mount Battie Summit Trail

Mount Battie at 800 feet is the defining landmark of Midcoast Maine, its stone summit tower rising directly above the picturesque harbor town of Camden and delivering what many consider the single most iconic coastal panorama in New England. The trail begins at the state park entrance on Route 52 and climbs through a mixed hardwood forest of red oak, red maple, and birch — spectacular in mid-October foliage season — before emerging onto the open granite summit plateau. The view north and east across Penobscot Bay encompasses dozens of the bay's signature spruce-topped islands, the Camden inner harbor with its fleet of traditional windjammer schooners, the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse, and on exceptionally clear days the blue silhouette of Acadia National Park's Cadillac Mountain 25 miles to the east. The summit also features the historic 1921 stone WWI memorial tower, open for climbing during park hours. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, who grew up in Camden, famously described this view in her poem “Renascence.” An auto road provides an alternative access, so the summit can be crowded on summer weekends; early morning hiking rewards visitors with the bay cloaked in sea fog below.