Carrie Jones

May 27, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.

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BAR HARBOR—The barges meant to help reconstruct the town’s 100-year-old breakwater have arrived in Bar Harbor’s waters.

The breakwater is an underwater structure meant to protect the Bar Harbor harbor.

That harbor hosts whale watches, kayakers, recreational boaters, lobster fishers, nature cruises, and cruise ships from southerly storms, large wakes, and gales.

It is located near downtown Bar Harbor, running from Bald Porcupine Island toward the Shore Path, a major tourist attraction and local walkway that runs parallel to the coast in front of mansions and inns. Bald Porcupine Island is National Park Service land and part of Acadia National Park.

Agate Construction Company won the bid for the work.

The company will repair two distinct major sections. One is approximately 800 feet and the other is 850 feet long. Minor areas of the “rubble mound breakwater structure” will also be fixed.

According to the Army Corps of Engineers, storms damaged the breakwater.

“Tasks include mobilization and demobilization, delivery and placement of new armor stone, removal, rehandling, and resetting of existing stones to achieve proper tie-in and interlocking placement, all performed via water access. The repairs will be constructed with 1.5H:1V side slopes, and no land access or work from the crest of the breakwater is permitted,” the Corp writes.

The Army Corps of Engineers and Bar Harbor Harbormaster Chris Wharff told the Bar Harbor Harbor Committee, March 9, that they expected some concern from Shore Path residents as well as lobstermen during the federal project. The area is a well-used fishing ground.

The Corps will also have no-wake zones in the area because wakes can be dangerous to construction workers in marine environments

The Corps will be establishing a transport route that will most likely come through the shipping channel.

The construction, representatives said, can be loud. There will be diesel engines, tugboats, a hum from those machines. The contractors will work daylight hours for the most part. There will be no blasting. Tugs will have spotlights.

The breakwater project has an expected end date of March 2028, but engineers hope to finish well before then since the work is happening during the summer months, Corps representatives said.

The federally authorized project’s primary goal is to return the breakwater to its authorized dimensions and functions, which was as a high-tide-level structure. The Corps hopes to get it back to a crest elevation of 11.4 mean lower level water (mllw).

The Corps hopes to install six to ten ton armourstones based on the coastal analysis that had previously been performed. The contract is for approximately 12,000 tons. The breakwater’s base is approximately 100 feet wide and it rises approximately 65 feet.

The breakwater is meant to help protect the harbor from ground swell and at the time also from the “undertow for battleships and other large boats lying in the outer harbor.”

The originally planned top ten feet of the structure was not built, which is why it is often under the surface when the sea level is high. The current structure currently weighs approximately 382,000 tons.

Discussion of the breakwater began back in 1888 with significant work finished in 1900, then in 1907 funds were expended for its improvement. Work continued until 1917.

In 1987, the Army Corps examined a portion of the breakwater where a yacht ran aground.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

The Breakwater That Protects Bar Harbor’s Harbor Is About to Be Fixed

Carrie Jones

·

Mar 10

Read full story

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All photos: Carrie Jones/Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story

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