Bear Island is one of the Thimble Islands

Thimble Islands

Ghost Island redirects here. For the island in Japan, see Hashima Island.The Thimble Islands is an archipelago consisting of small islands in Long Island Sound, located in and around the harbor of Stony Creek in the southeast corner of Branford, Connecticut.The archipelago of islands made up of...

 off Stony Creek

Stony Creek, Connecticut

Stony Creek is an affluent, shorefront section of Branford, Connecticut, centered on a harbor on Long Island Sound, in the southeast corner of the town. Stony Creek residents feel it has its own distinct feeling, that of a small village with a traditional timeless and quaint charm...

, a section of Branford

Branford, Connecticut

-Landmarks and attractions:Branford has six historic districts that are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places . These include buildings in Federal, Arts and Crafts, and Queen Anne styles of architecture...

, Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

. It is home to a former granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 quarry

Quarry

A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, and gravel. They are often collocated with concrete and asphalt plants due to the requirement...

, which exported high-quality pink granite to such constructions as the Lincoln Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial is an American memorial built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The architect was Henry Bacon, the sculptor of the main statue was Daniel Chester French, and the painter of the interior...

, Grant's Tomb

Grant's Tomb

General Grant National Memorial , better known as Grant's Tomb, is a mausoleum containing the bodies of Ulysses S. Grant , American Civil War General and 18th President of the United States, and his wife, Julia Dent Grant...

 and the base of the Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...

. The famous Stony Creek granite is still quarried in Stony Creek.

Bear Island was originally called "Goat Island" by locals up to the 1890s, referring to goat herds kept there for milk by its community of Swedish immigrant quarry workers.