Mount Desert Island History
Ancient native peoples made
their home on Mount Desert Island long before
European explorers ever ventured across the
Atlantic. One tribe, whose burial sites contained
red ochre, earned the name the Red Paint People.
Few surviving records of their presence remain:
slate tools, pottery, red ochre burials, and
middens, or large refuse piles of shells, which
archaeologists have dated at between 3,000 and
5,000 years old.
More is known about the Abnaki
people, who inhabited the island at the time the
first Europeans made contact in the 1500s.
Originally it was believed the Abnakis traveled
to Pemetic - or "sloping land," as they
called the island - by birch-bark canoe from
their winter homes near the Penobscot River's
headwaters. During the summer months, they would
hunt, fish, and gather berries near Somes Sound.
More recently, archaeologists have concluded that
the Abnakis actually wintered on Pemetic to take
advantage of the milder coastal winters.
The history of these early
island residents is told at Acadia's Abbe Museum,
located just off the Park Loop Road near Sieur de
Monts Spring. The museum's collection includes
prehistoric pottery, bone, and stone tools, as
well as more recent artifacts such as baskets,
porcupine quillwork, and a canoe and wigwam made
from birch bark.
European Explorers
The Florentine explorer Giovanni
da Verrazano may not have set foot on Pemetic
during his 1524 voyage along the North American
coast, but it is he who is credited with
christening the area that is now Maine and the
Canadian Maritimes with the name L'Acadie or
Acadia. Some historians believe it to be an
Abnaki word; others say it is a corruption of
Arcadia, an equally scenic and inspiring region
of Ancient Greece. Eighty years later, in 1604,
the French explorer Samuel Champlain was struck
by the bareness of the island's mountaintops
while sailing along the coast. He gave Pemetic
the name by which it is known today: l'Isles des
Monts-déserts or Mount Desert Island. Champlain,
who crossed the Atlantic 29 times and later
founded Quebec, is believed to have run aground
at Otter Point, where he met members of the
Abnaki tribe. A party of French Jesuits, who
settled at the mouth of Somes Sound in 1613, were
also warmly greeted by the Abnaki. The priests
intended to found a mission there but were soon
after pushed out by a band of English explorers
determined to expand northward from their
settlements in Massachusetts. For the next
century, the French and British would struggle
for control of Acadia. In 1759, the British
finally prevailed when they defeated the French
in Quebec, but not before a young French nobleman
laid claim to a large section of the Maine coast.
Sieur de Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac stopped
long enough on Mount Desert to lend his name to
the island's highest mountain before moving on to
found the city of Detroit (Michigan).
The First Settlers
Settlement progressed slowly but
steadily before and after the American
Revolution. Many of Mount Desert Island's towns
bear the names of the first settlers, including
Abraham Somes, a Massachusetts sailor who, with
his wife and four daughters, settled on the
island in 1762. Because of its proximity to
sailing routes, the western side of the island
was settled first. Later arrivals gravitated to
the island's eastern half, where the soil proved
more suitable for farming. Then known as Eden,
Bar Harbor was incorporated as a town in 1796.
By 1820, the year Maine was
admitted to the Union, most island inhabitants
were engaged in fishing, shipbuilding, lumbering,
or farming. This period of island life is well
documented at the Islesford Historical Museum,
located on Little Cranberry Island and accessible
by cruise boat.
Summercators
By midcentury, a new industry
emerged: tourism. First artists, including the
distinguished landscape painters Thomas Cole and
Frederic Church, traveled to Mount Desert to
partake of its scenic splendors. Then came
journalists and sportsmen, drawn by the promise
of the vast, unspoiled wilderness Cole and Church
had depicted. Early visitors, known as
"rusticators" or
"summercators," bunked with local
families.
Soon inns and other hostelries
began to dot the island. (One overly ambitious
entrepreneur built a hotel on top of Cadillac
Mountain and a cog railway to carry guests to it.
The summer clientele preferred their horse-drawn
buckboard carriages, and both hotel and railway
closed after only seven years.) By 1880, Bar
Harbor boasted 30 hotels and a national
reputation as a summer resort.
That reputation was sealed soon
after, when America's most socially prominent
families - the Rockefellers, Morgans, Fords,
Astors, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers - began
summering in Bar Harbor and nearby Northeast
Harbor and Seal Harbor. They built magnificent
summer "cottages" of palatial
dimensions, entertained lavishly, and forever
altered the rustic character of the island.
Ironically, these same summer colonists also
helped preserve the natural beauty of Mount
Desert Island, for it was they who created
Acadia, the first national park whose land was
donated entirely by private citizens.
National Park Status
A Maine politician once remarked
that "the portable sawmill created Acadia
National Park." Concerned that this tool of
progress would cut a swath through their island
paradise, a group of summer residents, led by the
president of Harvard University, Charles W.
Eliot, formed a public land trust in 1901 to
protect the island from uncontrolled development.
The group had the foresight to appoint George
Bucknam Dorr as its director. A member of a
highly regarded Boston family who had made its
fortune in textiles, Dorr would spend the next 43
years (and much of his own wealth) tirelessly
working to protect and preserve Acadia for public
use.
The land trust's first notable
acquisition was the chiseled headland known as
The Beehive, in 1908, followed soon by the summit
of 1,530-foot Cadillac Mountain. By 1916, Dorr
secured national monument status for the trust,
whic hhad grown to more than 5,000 acres. By
1919, the monument - then 15,000 acres in size -
became a national park, the first to be
established east of the Mississippi. As a nod to
its French heritage, it was named Lafayette
National Park. Dorr was appointed Lafayette's
first superintendent, a position that he held
until his death in 1944.
Over the next 10 years, the park
doubled in size, thanks in part to the
acquisition of the breathtaking Schoodic
Peninsula, which faces Mount Desert Island across
Frenchman Bay. The family who donated the
2,000-acre peninsula had but one small
stipulation: Being residents of England, they
objected to the park's Francophile name. Always
eager to accommodate a generous donor, Dorr
arranged to change the name to Acadia National
Park, a move that required an act of Congress.
The park's last major acquisition came in 1943,
with the donation of 3,000 acres on unspoiled
Isle au Haut, an island that is about 15 miles
southwest of Mount Desert Island in Penobscot
Bay.
Next to George Dorr, Acadia has
had no better friend than industrialist and
philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. He not
only donated more than 10,000 acres of parkland
(including the dramatic stretch of coast between
Thunder Hole and Otter Cliffs), but he was also
responsible for one of Acadia's most picturesque
features - the 50 miles of gravel carriage roads
that wind through its sylvan interior. In 1913,
alarmed by the prospect of a park overrun by
automobiles, Rockefeller began building the
single-lane carriage roads connected by a series
of 17 handsome bridges crafted from local granite
and cobblestones. Today, the carriage roads are
enjoyed not only by equestrians (carriage rides
are available through the park's Wildwood
Stables) but also by cyclists, hikers, and,
during the winter months, cross-country skiers.
Fire!
In 1947, a great fire broke out
on Mount Desert Island, consuming some 17,000
acres and burning for 10 days before it was
brought under control. The blaze swept down Bar
Harbor's "Millionaire's Row,"
destroying more than 60 grand summer cottages and
effectively bringing the upper-crust resort era
to a close. Some of the surviving cottages have
been converted into inns and bed-and-breakfasts.
Others remain private residences, for Mount
Desert Island is still a summer home to the likes
of the Fords, Rockefellers, and Astors, as well
as a new generation of summercators such as
Katharine Hepburn and Julia Child.
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