Description of Historic Place

Indian Beach is fronted by the Grand Manan Channel with extreme strong currents. The back of the seawall has a small pond and then towering 90-100 metre cliffs. The seawall itself is about 400 metres long and is only accessible by boat or hiking a challenging trail.

Heritage Value

Indian Beach in Grand Manan is designated a Local Historic Place for its connection to our Island’s original seasonal settlers. The Passamaquoddy people would come to Indian Beach for the summer months to harvest porpoise and fish from the rich waters. They would dry the harvest on the seawall. They built camps to live in but did not spend the winters here. These seasonal patterns of the Passamaquoddy in the area were still active when documented in 1899 by W. F. Ganong. Existing pre-contact and early historical archaeological sites supply information on the seasonal habits of these groups and also suggest early permanent settlement of non-aboriginal groups. The area is also the source of many local folklore stories.

Source: Grand Manan Archives - Local Historic Places files

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe Indian Beach include:
- natural seawall made all of stone washed up from the ocean;
- accessible only by boat or by hiking trail;
- high cliffs surrounding the area;
- small pond located between the seawall and the beach;
- pre-contact and early historical archaeological resources.