Kennebunk: Discover beaches, history, and nature

Kennebunk offers a range of options for planning your trip: Mother's Beach, trails through woods and wetlands, local history attractions, and seasonal events. You can choose which ones will shape your days based on your interests and the dates that work for you.

Beach access and nature trails

At Mother's Beach, an ADA-compliant Mobi-Mat enables people with limited mobility to get from the parking lot to the beach. This equipment applies to this route and may be important when planning a beach visit. If you rely on the Mobi-Mat, check its availability before you travel.

Hope Woods offers two miles of trails that are open to the public year-round. The accessible trail there is listed as 0.8 miles long. Hope Woods is also home to diverse wildlife and notable natural features.

The Secret Garden Preserve offers a different landscape: its 1.5-mile-long trail passes through woods, extensive fern beds, and wetlands. A visit there can therefore be planned around these particular landscape features. The stated trail length gives you a specific distance to use for planning; the description of the woods, ferns, and wetlands shows which natural areas the route passes through.

Local history, art, and culture

The Brick Store Museum presents local history, art, and cultures from Kennebunk and the surrounding communities. It does so in five historic buildings on Main Street. Its offerings therefore extend beyond the history of Kennebunk itself and include the surrounding communities. Visitors interested in several aspects of local life can find history as well as art and culture here, all in an institutional setting.

Kennebunk's Museum in the Streets focuses more narrowly on the history of Kennebunk. The 25-part heritage discovery program features rare photographs, documents, and records. Together with the Brick Store Museum, this offers two distinct ways to explore: the museum presents history, art, and cultures from Kennebunk and the surrounding communities, while Museum in the Streets focuses on Kennebunk's own history and the related historical materials.

Market and seasonal events

The Kennebunk Artisans Marketplace features goods from 60 to 70 approved vendors, including bakers, chocolatiers, farmers, and woodworkers. The market is located at the Waterhouse Center on Main Street in Kennebunk. Vendor offerings may change. The schedule for 2026 listed opening days on Saturdays from May 23 through October 3, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. This period ended on October 3; the listed hours therefore apply to the 2026 season schedule.

The Waterhouse Center is an open pavilion in the center of Kennebunk, measuring 100 × 120 feet and located at 51 Main Street. As a youth and family pavilion, it hosts events and festivals in all four seasons; winter activities include ice skating. The program may vary. If you want to plan your stay around a particular event, check the dates announced for it. This way, you can take the seasonal nature of the offerings into account without assuming that any particular event will take place.

Discover more destinations: Ogunquit, North Berwick, Limerick, South Berwick, Kittery, Old Orchard Beach, Buxton, Biddeford.

For the broader travel overview: York.