Alberto Elias polished the 15 camera lenses on his four-foot-tall backpack. As he prepared for his trek around the Statue of Liberty, he took a deep lunge and strapped the green, 40-pound Google Trekker onto his back.

“That’s cool,” a young boy said with excitement, pointing at the colorful apparatus. “You’re the Google Maps guy.”

“Yes, I am,” Mr. Elias, 25, said. He nodded and prepared to take off.

On Wednesday, Google took its first step toward putting Liberty and Ellis Islands on the maps, Google Maps with Street View, that is.

While Street View’s immersive 360-degree maps have been available for most of New York City since 2007, Liberty Island and its neighbor, Ellis Island, have never been mapped using the technology. Getting access to Liberty Island, which is run by the National Park Service, is complicated, and it had taken time to work through the process.