Our Story
Rooted on Bailey Island. Built to reach beyond it.
Cribstone Lobster operates at Cook’s Wharf, directly in front of the bridge that carries Route 24 onto Bailey Island. The wharf had its name long before our business did, and we never wanted to erase that history. We are Cribstone Lobster, operating at Cook’s Wharf—and the reason for our name is right outside the window.
The bridge outside our window
There is only one like it.
If you have ever driven onto Bailey Island, you have already crossed the reason for our name. For years, islanders wanted a dependable bridge to Orr’s Island. When the project finally moved ahead in the 1920s, the engineers had to solve a problem locals knew well: Will’s Gut carries a hard tide, and anything too solid would only give that water something to fight.
The solution was wonderfully practical. Massive slabs of Maine granite were stacked lengthwise and crosswise into open stone cribs. The weight holds the bridge in place; the openings let the tide run through it. The bridge was completed in 1928, and the design worked so well that it is still carrying traffic nearly a century later. It is recognized as the only bridge of its type in the world, as well as a National Register property and a historic civil engineering landmark.
What we like most about the bridge is not that it is rare. It is what it does. It took a place that is unmistakably its own—Bailey Island—and gave it a permanent connection to everything beyond it.
That felt like the right name for us. We sit directly in front of the bridge. Lobster comes to us from the waters around the island, and from this wharf it leaves for restaurants, markets and dinner tables across the country. The Cribstone Bridge connects Bailey Island to the world. Cribstone Lobster is our way of carrying a little of Bailey Island across it.
A view of the Cribstone Bridge across Will’s Gut—the landmark directly in front of our wharf and the reason for our name.
Why the wharf matters
A long coastline can still run out of places to work.
Maine has plenty of shoreline. Working shoreline is different. A commercial wharf is a place where a boat can land, a catch can come ashore, fuel and gear can move, and another day on the water can begin. Those places have been disappearing, and once working access is converted to something else, it is difficult to get back.
That is the larger reason we care about Cook’s Wharf. Cribstone Lobster needs a working wharf to do business, but the wharf matters beyond us. We want this piece of Bailey Island to remain useful to the lobstermen working here now and available to the fishermen who will need it after us.
What happens here
The days are simple. That is part of the point.
Boats come in. We buy lobster from fishermen working around Bailey Island. The catch is sorted and handled at the wharf, then moves back out—to wholesale customers and into insulated boxes bound overnight for homes around the country.
There is no separate online version of Cribstone. The website is simply a new route out of an old kind of place: a working Maine lobster wharf.
Our wharf.
Your box.Bailey Island, Maine