The main campus, 6.5 km from Nantucket Town, includes a building comprising two bunk rooms, kitchen, dining room, and classroom accommodating 14 people. A small, but well-equipped laboratory provides facilities for classes and researchers. Other buildings contain a photographic darkroom, workshop and offices. The property includes a beach on Nantucket Harbor and a network of walking paths throughout the uplands. Another building, 0.8 km from Nantucket center, contains five two-bedroom housekeeping apartments.
All facilities are open throughout the year.
Investigators may live at the Station while using excellent primary and secondary source libraries maintained by other Nantucket organizations to work on Indian archaeology, literary studies, history of the whale fishery, maritime history, Nantucket history, and history of the abolition movement. The Field Station has hosted cooperative conferences on Georges Bank resources, heath ecology, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Steinbeck. The Station emphasizes multidisciplinary education. Courses and field trips stress Indian and caucasian history, botanical and zoological ecology, geology, and particularly the role of human land use in shaping the Nantucket environment. Several schools and institutions organize field trips lasting from one to several days.