Great Cranberry Island is quaint place. At roughly 3.2 kilometers long and 1.6 kilometers wide, it is positively dwarfed by its geographic neighbor, Mount Desert Island. A pocketful of colorful individuals live here year round—about 30 to 40—with the summer’s occasionally ballooning to a sweltering 300. It’s quiet, pervasively so, a rogue voice your only refuge from isolation. Fisherman line shores hoping for lobsters, leading beautifully simple lives before the mountainous backdrop of the mainland. I had the pleasure of visiting Great Cranberry Island, mostly through happenstance, during a trip to Acadia National Park in 2023. Questions arise the moment you step onto the dock, a rather natural response to a place both distant and full of character. Why settle here? Who settled here? How long have these families lived on the island? I had questions, and very quickly did I realize that they weren’t easily answerable through traditional means. There’s a story here, one that you have to piece together to make sense of. That story, as with any place or people, deserves to be told. Thus, I’m telling it, and you’re here reading it. This is by no means a comprehensive history. I’m interested in beginnings, of how things came to be and who was involved. The Settling Tide is my attempt to faithfully chronicle the islands first fifty years—1760 to 1810—and solidify a timeline of events. It is a collation of everything I’ve been able to find, and a record for a place that has none. The site consists of two primary elements: the aforementioned timeline, and an interactive map. Both of these can be accessed via the navigation bar at the top of the website.