Katahdin Cruises and Moosehead Marine Museum
12 Lily Bay Road
Greenville, ME
Cruise the largest lake in Maine aboard the Katahdin, a 1914 steamboat and the last survivor of the fleet that once hauled loggers and rusticators across Moosehead.
In Greenville, at the foot of Moosehead Lake, the Moosehead Marine Museum keeps a remarkable survivor afloat: the Katahdin, a steamboat built in 1914 and known affectionately as the Kate. She is the last of the fleet of steamers that once crossed Maine's largest lake, and today she carries passengers on scenic cruises that double as a ride through history.
For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, steamboats were the highways of the North Woods, ferrying loggers, supplies, and wealthy sportsmen and their families, the rusticants, to remote camps and grand hotels. The Katahdin later spent decades towing huge log booms across the lake during the last years of the river drives. Now restored, she offers cruises past the cliffs of Mount Kineo, while the adjacent museum tells the whole story of the lake.
What Guests Love
- Cruising Moosehead Lake aboard a genuine century-old steamboat, the Katahdin
- Views of Mount Kineo's dramatic cliff rising straight from the water
- The Moosehead Marine Museum's story of the lake's steamboat and logging era
- The chance to spot moose, loons, and eagles from the deck
Worth Knowing
- Cruises run on a seasonal schedule with varying lengths; book ahead for the popular Mount Kineo trips
- Greenville is a remote North Woods town, so plan fuel, food, and lodging in advance
- Bring layers; it can be cool and breezy out on the big lake even in summer
- The Katahdin is a working historic vessel, so schedules can shift with weather
Details
Greenville, ME
Learn about Katahdin Cruises and Moosehead Marine Museum
The steamboat Katahdin
The Katahdin was built in 1914 at Bath, Maine, shipped north in pieces, and assembled on Moosehead Lake. For decades she carried passengers to the resort hotels and camps that ringed the lake in the golden age of the Maine woods vacation.
As the hotel era faded, the Kate took on heavy industrial work, towing enormous rafts of pulpwood, called booms, down the lake to feed the paper mills. She continued this work into the 1970s, at the very end of Maine's long era of moving logs by water.
When her working life ended, she was saved and restored by the community and now serves as the centerpiece of the Moosehead Marine Museum, one of the last operating lake steamboats of her kind in the country.
Cruising to Mount Kineo
The signature cruise runs up the lake toward Mount Kineo, a sheer cliff of flint-like rock that rises about 700 feet straight out of the water from a peninsula near the lake's center.
Mount Kineo's stone was quarried by Native peoples for thousands of years for tools, and its base was later the site of one of the grandest resort hotels in New England. The cliff view from the water is one of the great sights of the Maine woods.
Along the way, passengers watch for the wildlife that gives the region its name, including moose along the shore, loons on the water, and bald eagles overhead.
Moosehead Lake and the North Woods
Moosehead is the largest lake in Maine, roughly forty miles long, and the threshold of the North Woods, the vast, sparsely settled forest that stretches north toward the Allagash and the Canadian border.
Greenville, at the lake's foot, has long been the jumping-off point for this wilderness, once by steamboat and rail, now by floatplane, boat, and logging road, for anglers, hunters, paddlers, and moose-watchers.
The museum grounds and the town preserve this heritage, from the boats and the old rail connections to the story of the log drives that shaped the region's economy for more than a century.
Season by season
Summer is the heart of the cruise season, with the fullest schedule, warm days on the lake, and the best odds of calm water and wildlife sightings.
Fall is spectacular, when the North Woods blaze with color and foliage cruises show the shoreline at its most vivid, though the season is short.
Winter shuts the boat down but turns Greenland and the lake into a snowmobiling and ice-fishing country, a different, frozen face of the Moosehead region.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Greenville
Mount Kineo
By boat up the lake
A dramatic cliff rising from Moosehead Lake, with hiking trails, a fire tower, and a history of Native tool quarrying and grand resort hotels.
Lily Bay State Park
About 9 miles, a 15 minute drive
A lakeside park on Moosehead with camping, swimming, and boat launches along a quiet shore.
Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument
About 60 miles, over an hour drive
A vast new national monument east of Baxter State Park, with Katahdin views and some of the darkest skies in the East.