Mount Desert Island
Encyclopedia
Mount Desert Island in Hancock County
, Maine
, is the largest island off the coast of Maine. With an area of 108 square miles (279.7 km²) it is the 6th largest island in the contiguous United States. Though it is often claimed to be the third largest island on the eastern seaboard of the United States, it is actually second behind Long Island
(and ahead of Martha's Vineyard
). The island has a year-round population of approximately 10,000, although it is estimated that two and a half million tourists a year visit Acadia National Park
on the island. The island is home to numerous well-known summer colonies
such as Northeast Harbor
and Bar Harbor
. Current notable summer residents include George Mitchell
, Tim Robbins
, David Rockefeller
, Susan Sarandon
, and Martha Stewart
.
's observation that the summits of the island's mountains were free of vegetation as seen from the sea led him to call the island "île des Monts Déserts", or island of the Bare Mountains.
Deep shell heaps indicate American Indian
encampments dating back 6,000 years in Acadia National Park, but prehistoric records are scanty. The first written descriptions of Maine coast Indians, recorded 100 years after European trade contacts began, describe American Indians who lived off the land by hunting, fishing, collecting shellfish
, and gathering plants and berries. The Wabanaki Indians knew Mount Desert Island as Pemetic, "the sloping land." They built bark-covered conical shelters, and traveled in exquisitely designed birch
bark canoes. Historical notes record that the Wabanaki wintered in interior forests and spent their summers near the coast. Archeological evidence suggests the opposite pattern; in order to avoid harsh inland winters and to take advantage of salmon
runs upstream, American Indians wintered on the coast and summered inland.
, who made the first important contribution to the historical record of Mount Desert Island. He led the expedition that landed on Mount Desert on September 5, 1604 and wrote in his journal, "The mountain summits are all bare and rocky..... I name it Isles des Monts Desert." Champlain's visit to Mount Desert Island 16 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock
destined it to become part of Acadia
, a colony of New France
, before it became a part of New England
. Frenchman Bay
is named in Champlain's honour.
. (St. Sauveur Mountain on the Island still bears the name of the mission.)
The French missionaries began to build a fort, plant their corn, and baptize the natives. Two months later, on 2 July 1613, Captain Samuel Argall
of Virginia arrived on board the Treasurer and destroyed their mission. Three of the missionaries were killed and three were wounded. The rest of the company, some twenty in all, were taken prisoner. Argall took many of the prisoners to Jamestown. He eventually returned to Saint-Sauveur and cut down the cross the Jesuits had planted, replacing it with a Protestant version. He then set fire to the few building that were there. He then went on to burn the remaining French buildings on St. Croix Island and Port Royal, Nova Scotia
.
The English raid at Fernald Point signaled the dispute over the boundary between the French colony of Acadia to the north and the English colony of New England to the south. There is evidence that Claude de La Tour
immediately challenged the English action by re-establishing a fur-trading post in the near-by village of Castine, Maine
in the wake of Argall's raid.
There was a brief period when it seemed Mount Desert would again become a center of French activity. In 1688, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac
, an ambitious young man who had immigrated to New France and bestowed upon himself the title Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, asked for and received 100000 acres (404.7 km²) of land along the Maine coast, including all of Mount Desert. Cadillac's hopes of establishing a feudal estate in the New World, however, were short-lived. Although he and his bride resided here for a time, they soon abandoned their enterprise. Cadillac later gained lasting recognition as the founder of Detroit. The island's highest point, at 466 metres (1,528.9 ft) the highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States
, bears the name Cadillac Mountain
, and is notable for the fact that its summit is among the first points in the United States touched by the rays of the rising sun.
was the most southern settlement of Acadia. (Bristol, Maine
was the most northern New England settlement.) No one settled in this contested territory and for the next 150 years, Mount Desert Island's importance was primarily its use as a landmark for seamen, as for example when John Winthrop
, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony
, sketched the island's mountains on his voyage to the New World.
During Queen Anne's War
, in response to the French Raid on Deerfield, New Englander Major Benjamin Church raided the Acadian village of Castine, Maine
before gathering at Mount Desert Island with other ships to continue to with the Raid on St. Stephen, New Brunswick
, Raid on Grand Pre
, the Raid on Piziquid, and the Raid on Chignecto
.
, ending French dominion in Acadia
. With Indians scattered and the fleur-de-lis
banished, lands along the Maine coast opened for English settlement. Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts obtained a royal land grant on Mount Desert Island. In 1760, Bernard attempted to secure his claim by offering free land to settlers. Abraham Somes
and James Richardson
accepted the offer and settled their families at what is now Somesville.
Their real estate transactions probably made very little difference to the increasing number of settlers homesteading on Mount Desert Island. By 1820, when Maine separated from Massachusetts and became a separate state, farming and lumbering vied with fishing and shipbuilding as major occupations. Settlers converted hundreds of acres of trees into wood products ranging from schooner
s and barns to baby cribs and hand tools. Farmers harvested wheat, rye, corn, and potatoes. By 1850, the familiar sights of fishermen and sailors, fish racks and shipyard
s, revealed a way of life linked to the sea. Quarry
ing of granite
, which could be cut from hills close to deep water anchorage for shipment to major cities on the east coast, was also a major industry.
It was the outsiders, artists and journalists, who revealed and popularized this island to the world in the mid 19th century. Painters of the Hudson River School
, including Thomas Cole
and Frederic Church, glorified Mount Desert Island with their brushstrokes, inspiring patrons and friends to flock here. These were the "rusticators". Undaunted by crude accommodations and simple food, they sought out local fishermen and farmers to put them up for a modest fee. Summer after summer, the rusticators returned to renew friendships with local islanders and, most of all, to savor the fresh salt air, beautiful scenery, and relaxed pace. Soon the villagers' cottages and fishermen's huts filled to overflowing, and by 1880, 30 hotels competed for vacationers' dollars. Tourism was becoming the major industry. Catering to the rusticators and summer tourists visiting island towns, in particular Bar Harbor, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and other Wabanaki Indians sold baskets, bark canoes, bead work, carved clubs, and other crafts, offered guide services, and put on 'Indian shows.' During the summer season, dozens of families from several tribes lived in canvas tents and wooden shacks in the "Indian encampment" on the shores of Frenchman Bay.
For a select handful of Americans, the 1880s and the "Gay Nineties" meant affluence on a scale without precedent. Mount Desert, still remote from the cities of the East, became a retreat for prominent people of the time. The Rockefellers, Morgan
s, Ford
s, Vanderbilts
, Carnegie
s, and Astors
, chose to spend their summers here. Not content with the simple lodgings then available, these families transformed the landscape of Mount Desert Island with elegant estates, ironically called "cottages." The landscape architect Beatrix Farrand
, at the Cadwalder Rawle - Rhinelander Jones family summer home Reef Point Estate
, designed the gardens for many of these people. Projects included the Chinese inspired garden at 'The Eyrie' for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
at Seal Harbor (1926–35), and the planting plans for subtle roads at Acadia National Park
sponsored by John D. Rockefeller
(c.1930). Luxury, refinement, and ostentatious gatherings replaced buckboard rides, picnics, and day-long hikes of an earlier era. Some rusticators also formed "Village Improvement Societies" which constructed hiking trails and walking paths connecting the Island's villages to its interior mountains. For over 40 years, the wealthy held sway at Mount Desert, but the Great Depression
and World War II
marked the end of such extravagance. The final blow came in 1947 when a fire of monumental proportions consumed many of the great estates.
signed the act establishing Lafayette National Park, the first national park east of the Mississippi. Dorr, whose labors constituted "the greatest of one-man shows in the history of land conservation" became the first park superintendent.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. gifted the park with much of its land area. Like many rusticators, Rockefeller, whose family fortune was derived from the petroleum industry, wanted to keep the island free of automobiles; but local governments allowed the entry of automobiles on the island's roads. Rockefeller constructed approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) of carriage roads around the eastern half of the island. These roads were closed to automobiles and included many scenic vistas and beautiful stone bridges. Approximately 65 kilometers (40 miles) of these roads are within Acadia National Park and open only to hikers, bicyclists, horseback riders, horse-drawn carriages and cross country skiers.
In 1929, the park name changed to "Acadia".
In 1950, Marguerite Yourcenar
and Grace Frick bought a house, "Petite Plaisance", in Northeast Harbor on the island. Yourcenar wrote a large part of her novel Memoires d'Hadrien on the island, and she died there in 1987. Their house is now a museum. Both ladies were cremated and their ashes are buried in the Brookside Cemetery in Somesville.
In 1969, College of the Atlantic
, the island's first and only institution of higher education, was established in Bar Harbor.
period by volcanic ash. During the Ordovician
period the collision of Laurentia
, Gondwanaland, and Avalonia
, referred to as the Taconic Orogeny
, caused the formation to fold, thrust, and uplift above sea level, where later layers were eroded away and the schist was exposed. The Bar Harbor Formation, which is made up predominantly of sands and silts, and Cranberry Island Formation, made up from volcanic ash and magmatic debris, occurred under similar circumstances in the Silurian
and Devonian
periods, and were deposited on top of the Ellsworth Schist. However, due to less tectonic activity at that time, their deformation was less severe.
As mentioned above, quarrying of granite was historically an important industry. Due to orogenic activity during the Devonian, Mount Desert Island has three granite
units, the Cadillac Mountain granite, the fine grained Somesville granite, and the medium grained Somesville granite. Surrounding DCg, is a zone of breccia
ted material, known as DSz (Devonian Shatter Zone).
Most recently, Mount Desert Island was host to the Laurentide Ice Sheet
as it extended and receded during the Pleistocene
epoch. The glacier left a number of visible marks upon the landscape, such as Bubble Rock, a glacial erratic
carried 19 miles by the ice sheet from a Lucerne granite outcrop and deposited precariously on the side of South Bubble Mountain in Acadia National Park
. Other such examples are the moraines deposited at the southern ends of many of the glacier-carved valleys on the Island such as the Jordan Pond valley, indicating the extent of the glacier; and the beach sediments located in a regressional sequence beneath and around Jordan Pond, indicating the rebound of the continent after the glacier's recession approximately 25,000 years ago.
, and Sea Mink
(Neovison macrodon), as well as large numbers of raccoon, lynx, wolf, muskrat, and deer. Although beaver were trapped to extinction on the island, two pairs of beaver that were released in 1920 by George B. Dorr at the brook between Bubble Pond and Eagle Lake have repopulated it. A large fire in 1947 cleared the eastern half of the island of its coniferous trees and permitted the growth of aspen, birch, alder, maple and other deciduous trees which enabled the beaver to thrive.
Hancock County, Maine
Hancock County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maine. As of 2010, the population was 54,418. Its county seat is Ellsworth. It was incorporated on June 25, 1789...
, Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, is the largest island off the coast of Maine. With an area of 108 square miles (279.7 km²) it is the 6th largest island in the contiguous United States. Though it is often claimed to be the third largest island on the eastern seaboard of the United States, it is actually second behind Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
(and ahead of Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony....
). The island has a year-round population of approximately 10,000, although it is estimated that two and a half million tourists a year visit Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park is a National Park located in the U.S. state of Maine. It reserves much of Mount Desert Island, and associated smaller islands, off the Atlantic coast...
on the island. The island is home to numerous well-known summer colonies
Summer colony
The term summer colony is often used, particularly in the United States and Canada, to describe well-known resorts and upper-class enclaves, typically located near the ocean or mountains of New England or the Great Lakes...
such as Northeast Harbor
Northeast Harbor, Maine
Northeast Harbor is a village on Mount Desert Island, located in the town of Mount Desert in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The village has a significant summer population, and has long been a quiet enclave of the rich and famous. Summer residents include the Rockefeller family, as well as...
and Bar Harbor
Bar Harbor, Maine
Bar Harbor is a town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population is 5,235. Bar Harbor is a famous summer colony in the Down East region of Maine. It is home to the College of the Atlantic, Jackson Laboratory and Mount Desert Island...
. Current notable summer residents include George Mitchell
George J. Mitchell
George John Mitchell, Jr., is the former U.S. Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under the Obama administration. A Democrat, Mitchell was a United States Senator who served as the Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995...
, Tim Robbins
Tim Robbins
Timothy Francis "Tim" Robbins is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist and musician. He is the former longtime partner of actress Susan Sarandon...
, David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller
David Rockefeller, Sr. is the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. His five siblings were...
, Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...
, and Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart is an American business magnate, author, magazine publisher, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she has gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing publishing, broadcasting, and merchandising...
.
Origin of the name
Some natives stress the second syllable (de-ZERT), in the French fashion, although many others pronounce it in a fashion similar to the English name of a landscape devoid of vegetation (DEH-zert). French explorer Samuel de ChamplainSamuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain , "The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He founded New France and Quebec City on July 3, 1608....
's observation that the summits of the island's mountains were free of vegetation as seen from the sea led him to call the island "île des Monts Déserts", or island of the Bare Mountains.
Towns and villages
There are four towns on Mount Desert Island:- Bar HarborBar Harbor, MaineBar Harbor is a town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. As of the 2010 census, its population is 5,235. Bar Harbor is a famous summer colony in the Down East region of Maine. It is home to the College of the Atlantic, Jackson Laboratory and Mount Desert Island...
, with the villages of Eden, Hulls Cove, Salisbury Cove, and Town Hill; - Mount DesertMount Desert, MaineMount Desert is a town on Mount Desert Island in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,109 at the 2000 census. Incorporated in 1789, the town currently encompasses the villages of Otter Creek, Seal Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Somesville, Hall Quarry, and Pretty...
, with the villages of Hall Quarry, Northeast HarborNortheast Harbor, MaineNortheast Harbor is a village on Mount Desert Island, located in the town of Mount Desert in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The village has a significant summer population, and has long been a quiet enclave of the rich and famous. Summer residents include the Rockefeller family, as well as...
, Otter Creek, Pretty Marsh, Seal Harbor, and Somesville; - Southwest HarborSouthwest Harbor, MaineSouthwest Harbor is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. Located on Mount Desert Island, the population was 1,966 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
, with the villages of Manset and Seawall; - TremontTremont, MaineTremont is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. It is located on the southwestern side of Mount Desert Island, known to locals as "the quietside."...
, with the villages of Bass Harbor, Bernard, Gotts Island, Seal Cove, and West Tremont.
History
From NPS historyDeep shell heaps indicate American Indian
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
encampments dating back 6,000 years in Acadia National Park, but prehistoric records are scanty. The first written descriptions of Maine coast Indians, recorded 100 years after European trade contacts began, describe American Indians who lived off the land by hunting, fishing, collecting shellfish
Shellfish
Shellfish is a culinary and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environments, some kinds are found only in freshwater...
, and gathering plants and berries. The Wabanaki Indians knew Mount Desert Island as Pemetic, "the sloping land." They built bark-covered conical shelters, and traveled in exquisitely designed birch
Birch
Birch is a tree or shrub of the genus Betula , in the family Betulaceae, closely related to the beech/oak family, Fagaceae. The Betula genus contains 30–60 known taxa...
bark canoes. Historical notes record that the Wabanaki wintered in interior forests and spent their summers near the coast. Archeological evidence suggests the opposite pattern; in order to avoid harsh inland winters and to take advantage of salmon
Salmon
Salmon is the common name for several species of fish in the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the same family are called trout; the difference is often said to be that salmon migrate and trout are resident, but this distinction does not strictly hold true...
runs upstream, American Indians wintered on the coast and summered inland.
French colony
The first meeting between the people of Pemetic and the Europeans is a matter of conjecture. But it was a Frenchman, Samuel de ChamplainSamuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain , "The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He founded New France and Quebec City on July 3, 1608....
, who made the first important contribution to the historical record of Mount Desert Island. He led the expedition that landed on Mount Desert on September 5, 1604 and wrote in his journal, "The mountain summits are all bare and rocky..... I name it Isles des Monts Desert." Champlain's visit to Mount Desert Island 16 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock
Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. It is an important symbol in American history...
destined it to become part of Acadia
Acadia
Acadia was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine. At the end of the 16th century, France claimed territory stretching as far south as...
, a colony of New France
New France
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...
, before it became a part of New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. Frenchman Bay
Frenchman Bay
Frenchman Bay is a bay in Hancock County, Maine, named for Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who visited the area in 1604....
is named in Champlain's honour.
Raid on Mount Desert Island (1613)
In 1613, French Jesuits, welcomed by Indians, established the first French mission in America—Saint Sauveur Mission—on what is now Fernald Point, near the entrance to Somes SoundSomes Sound
Somes Sound is a body of water running deep into Mount Desert Island, the main site of Acadia National Park in Maine, United States. Its deepest point is approximately , and it is over deep in several places. The sound almost splits the island in two...
. (St. Sauveur Mountain on the Island still bears the name of the mission.)
The French missionaries began to build a fort, plant their corn, and baptize the natives. Two months later, on 2 July 1613, Captain Samuel Argall
Samuel Argall
Sir Samuel Argall was an English adventurer and naval officer.As a sea captain, in 1609, Argall was the first to determine a shorter northern route from England across the Atlantic Ocean to the new English colony of Virginia, based at Jamestown, and made numerous voyages to the New World...
of Virginia arrived on board the Treasurer and destroyed their mission. Three of the missionaries were killed and three were wounded. The rest of the company, some twenty in all, were taken prisoner. Argall took many of the prisoners to Jamestown. He eventually returned to Saint-Sauveur and cut down the cross the Jesuits had planted, replacing it with a Protestant version. He then set fire to the few building that were there. He then went on to burn the remaining French buildings on St. Croix Island and Port Royal, Nova Scotia
Port Royal, Nova Scotia
Port Royal was the capital of Acadia from 1605 to 1710 and is now a town called Annapolis Royal in the western part of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Initially Port Royal was located on the north shore of the Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia, at the site of the present reconstruction of the...
.
The English raid at Fernald Point signaled the dispute over the boundary between the French colony of Acadia to the north and the English colony of New England to the south. There is evidence that Claude de La Tour
Claude de Saint-Étienne de la Tour
Claude de Saint-Étienne de la Tour was born in the province of Champagne, France and came to Acadia in 1610 after suffering heavy losses as a ship's captain....
immediately challenged the English action by re-establishing a fur-trading post in the near-by village of Castine, Maine
Castine, Maine
Castine is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States and was once the capital of Acadia . The population was 1,343 at the 2000 census. Castine is the home of Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year institution that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine and marine...
in the wake of Argall's raid.
There was a brief period when it seemed Mount Desert would again become a center of French activity. In 1688, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac
Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac
Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac was a French explorer and adventurer in New France, now an area of North America stretching from Eastern Canada in the north to Louisiana in the south. Rising from a modest beginning in Acadia in 1683 as an explorer, trapper, and a trader of alcohol...
, an ambitious young man who had immigrated to New France and bestowed upon himself the title Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac, asked for and received 100000 acres (404.7 km²) of land along the Maine coast, including all of Mount Desert. Cadillac's hopes of establishing a feudal estate in the New World, however, were short-lived. Although he and his bride resided here for a time, they soon abandoned their enterprise. Cadillac later gained lasting recognition as the founder of Detroit. The island's highest point, at 466 metres (1,528.9 ft) the highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, bears the name Cadillac Mountain
Cadillac Mountain
Cadillac Mountain is a mountain located on Mount Desert Island, within Acadia National Park. With an elevation of , its summit is the highest point in Hancock County, and the highest within of a coastline on the U.S. East Coast as well as down to the Yucatán Peninsula.-History:Before being renamed...
, and is notable for the fact that its summit is among the first points in the United States touched by the rays of the rising sun.
Raid on Acadia (1704)
During much of the seventeenth century, near-by Castine, MaineCastine, Maine
Castine is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States and was once the capital of Acadia . The population was 1,343 at the 2000 census. Castine is the home of Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year institution that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine and marine...
was the most southern settlement of Acadia. (Bristol, Maine
Bristol, Maine
Bristol is a town in Lincoln County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,644 at the 2000 census. A fishing and resort area, Bristol includes the villages of New Harbor, Pemaquid, Round Pond, Bristol Mills and Chamberlain. It includes the Pemaquid Archeological Site, a U.S. National...
was the most northern New England settlement.) No one settled in this contested territory and for the next 150 years, Mount Desert Island's importance was primarily its use as a landmark for seamen, as for example when John Winthrop
John Winthrop
John Winthrop was a wealthy English Puritan lawyer, and one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants from England in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of...
, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
, sketched the island's mountains on his voyage to the New World.
During Queen Anne's War
Queen Anne's War
Queen Anne's War , as the North American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession was known in the British colonies, was the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought between France and England, later Great Britain, in North America for control of the continent. The War of the...
, in response to the French Raid on Deerfield, New Englander Major Benjamin Church raided the Acadian village of Castine, Maine
Castine, Maine
Castine is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States and was once the capital of Acadia . The population was 1,343 at the 2000 census. Castine is the home of Maine Maritime Academy, a four-year institution that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine and marine...
before gathering at Mount Desert Island with other ships to continue to with the Raid on St. Stephen, New Brunswick
St. Stephen, New Brunswick
St. Stephen is a Canadian town in Charlotte County, New Brunswick, situated on the east bank of the St. Croix River at .-Climate:...
, Raid on Grand Pre
Raid on Grand Pre
The Raid on Grand Pré was the major action of a raiding expedition conducted by New England militia Colonel Benjamin Church against French Acadia in June 1704, during Queen Anne's War...
, the Raid on Piziquid, and the Raid on Chignecto
Isthmus of Chignecto
The Isthmus of Chignecto is an isthmus bordering the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia which connects the Nova Scotia peninsula with North America....
.
British Colony
In 1759, after a century and a half of conflict, British troops triumphed in QuebecQuebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, ending French dominion in Acadia
Acadia
Acadia was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine. At the end of the 16th century, France claimed territory stretching as far south as...
. With Indians scattered and the fleur-de-lis
Fleur-de-lis
The fleur-de-lis or fleur-de-lys is a stylized lily or iris that is used as a decorative design or symbol. It may be "at one and the same time, political, dynastic, artistic, emblematic, and symbolic", especially in heraldry...
banished, lands along the Maine coast opened for English settlement. Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts obtained a royal land grant on Mount Desert Island. In 1760, Bernard attempted to secure his claim by offering free land to settlers. Abraham Somes
Abraham Somes
Abraham Somes was the primary founder of English settlements on the scenic Mount Desert Island, which is now part of Acadia National Park in present-day Maine. In 1761, Somes, a cooper by trade, brought his wife and family from Gloucester, Massachusetts to the island, along with James...
and James Richardson
James Richardson
James Richardson may refer to:*James Richardson , Canadian businessman, Chief Marketing Officer of Cisco Systems*James Richardson , British...
accepted the offer and settled their families at what is now Somesville.
American Revolution
The onset of the Revolutionary War ended Bernard's plans for Mount Desert Island. In its aftermath, Bernard, who had sided with the British government, lost his claim. Massachusetts, now free of British rule, granted the western half of Mount Desert Island to John Bernard, son of the governor, who, unlike his father, sided with the rebels. The eastern half of the island was granted to Marie Therese de Gregoire, granddaughter of Cadillac. Bernard and de Gregoire soon sold their landholdings to nonresident landlords.Their real estate transactions probably made very little difference to the increasing number of settlers homesteading on Mount Desert Island. By 1820, when Maine separated from Massachusetts and became a separate state, farming and lumbering vied with fishing and shipbuilding as major occupations. Settlers converted hundreds of acres of trees into wood products ranging from schooner
Schooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
s and barns to baby cribs and hand tools. Farmers harvested wheat, rye, corn, and potatoes. By 1850, the familiar sights of fishermen and sailors, fish racks and shipyard
Shipyard
Shipyards and dockyards are places which repair and build ships. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance and basing activities than shipyards, which are sometimes associated more with initial...
s, revealed a way of life linked to the sea. 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...
ing of 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...
, which could be cut from hills close to deep water anchorage for shipment to major cities on the east coast, was also a major industry.
Rusticators
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
, including Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
and Frederic Church, glorified Mount Desert Island with their brushstrokes, inspiring patrons and friends to flock here. These were the "rusticators". Undaunted by crude accommodations and simple food, they sought out local fishermen and farmers to put them up for a modest fee. Summer after summer, the rusticators returned to renew friendships with local islanders and, most of all, to savor the fresh salt air, beautiful scenery, and relaxed pace. Soon the villagers' cottages and fishermen's huts filled to overflowing, and by 1880, 30 hotels competed for vacationers' dollars. Tourism was becoming the major industry. Catering to the rusticators and summer tourists visiting island towns, in particular Bar Harbor, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and other Wabanaki Indians sold baskets, bark canoes, bead work, carved clubs, and other crafts, offered guide services, and put on 'Indian shows.' During the summer season, dozens of families from several tribes lived in canvas tents and wooden shacks in the "Indian encampment" on the shores of Frenchman Bay.
For a select handful of Americans, the 1880s and the "Gay Nineties" meant affluence on a scale without precedent. Mount Desert, still remote from the cities of the East, became a retreat for prominent people of the time. The Rockefellers, Morgan
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric...
s, Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
s, Vanderbilts
Vanderbilt family
The Vanderbilt family is an American family of Dutch origin prominent during the Gilded Age. It started off with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthropy...
, Carnegie
Carnegie
Carnegie may refer to:*Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, for whom many entries on this page are named*Dale Carnegie, motivational speaker and author*David Carnegie , Scottish-Swedish industrialist...
s, and Astors
Astor family
The Astor family is a Anglo-American business family of German descent notable for their prominence in business, society, and politics.-Founding family members:...
, chose to spend their summers here. Not content with the simple lodgings then available, these families transformed the landscape of Mount Desert Island with elegant estates, ironically called "cottages." The landscape architect Beatrix Farrand
Beatrix Farrand
Beatrix Jones Farrand was a landscape gardener and landscape architect in the United States. Her career included commissions to design the gardens for private residences, estates and country homes, public parks, botanic gardens, college campuses, and the White House.Farrand was one of the founding...
, at the Cadwalder Rawle - Rhinelander Jones family summer home Reef Point Estate
Reef Point Estate
Reef Point Estate is located in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA, on Mount Desert Island. Reef Point was the coastal “cottage” of Mary Cadwalder Rawle and Frederic Rhinelander Jones, the parents of landscape architect, Beatrix Farrand .-Reef Point:...
, designed the gardens for many of these people. Projects included the Chinese inspired garden at 'The Eyrie' for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, , was a prominent socialite and philanthropist and the second-generation matriarch of the renowned Rockefeller family...
at Seal Harbor (1926–35), and the planting plans for subtle roads at Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park is a National Park located in the U.S. state of Maine. It reserves much of Mount Desert Island, and associated smaller islands, off the Atlantic coast...
sponsored by John D. Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller was an American oil industrialist, investor, and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of...
(c.1930). Luxury, refinement, and ostentatious gatherings replaced buckboard rides, picnics, and day-long hikes of an earlier era. Some rusticators also formed "Village Improvement Societies" which constructed hiking trails and walking paths connecting the Island's villages to its interior mountains. For over 40 years, the wealthy held sway at Mount Desert, but the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
marked the end of such extravagance. The final blow came in 1947 when a fire of monumental proportions consumed many of the great estates.
Acadia National Park
In 1901, George B. Dorr, disturbed by the growing development of the Bar Harbor area and the dangers he foresaw in the newly invented gasoline powered portable sawmill, established along with others the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations. The corporation, whose sole purpose was to preserve land for the perpetual use of the public, acquired 6000 acres (24.3 km²) by 1913. Dorr offered the land to the federal government, and in 1916, President Wilson announced the creation of Sieur de Monts National Monument. Dorr continued to acquire property and renewed his efforts to obtain full national park status for his beloved preserve. In 1919, President Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
signed the act establishing Lafayette National Park, the first national park east of the Mississippi. Dorr, whose labors constituted "the greatest of one-man shows in the history of land conservation" became the first park superintendent.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. gifted the park with much of its land area. Like many rusticators, Rockefeller, whose family fortune was derived from the petroleum industry, wanted to keep the island free of automobiles; but local governments allowed the entry of automobiles on the island's roads. Rockefeller constructed approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) of carriage roads around the eastern half of the island. These roads were closed to automobiles and included many scenic vistas and beautiful stone bridges. Approximately 65 kilometers (40 miles) of these roads are within Acadia National Park and open only to hikers, bicyclists, horseback riders, horse-drawn carriages and cross country skiers.
In 1929, the park name changed to "Acadia".
In 1950, Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist. Winner of the Prix Femina and the Erasmus Prize, she was the first woman elected to the Académie française, in 1980, and the seventeenth person to occupy Seat 3.-Biography:Yourcenar was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie...
and Grace Frick bought a house, "Petite Plaisance", in Northeast Harbor on the island. Yourcenar wrote a large part of her novel Memoires d'Hadrien on the island, and she died there in 1987. Their house is now a museum. Both ladies were cremated and their ashes are buried in the Brookside Cemetery in Somesville.
In 1969, College of the Atlantic
College of the Atlantic
The College of the Atlantic, founded in 1969, is a private, alternative liberal-arts college located in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine, United States. It awards a bachelor's degree solely in the field of human ecology, though with a variety of emphases. The college is small, with...
, the island's first and only institution of higher education, was established in Bar Harbor.
Geology
Mount Desert Island is rich in geological history dating back to approximately 550 million years ago. The earliest formation on the island is the Ellsworth Schist Formation, which was a sea-floor mud deposit created during the CambrianCambrian
The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from Mya ; it is succeeded by the Ordovician. Its subdivisions, and indeed its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for Wales, where Britain's...
period by volcanic ash. During the Ordovician
Ordovician
The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six of the Paleozoic Era, and covers the time between 488.3±1.7 to 443.7±1.5 million years ago . It follows the Cambrian Period and is followed by the Silurian Period...
period the collision of Laurentia
Laurentia
Laurentia is a large area of continental craton, which forms the ancient geological core of the North American continent...
, Gondwanaland, and Avalonia
Avalonia
Avalonia was a microcontinent in the Paleozoic era. Crustal fragments of this former microcontinent underlie south-west Great Britain, and the eastern coast of North America. It is the source of many of the older rocks of Western Europe, Atlantic Canada, and parts of the coastal United States...
, referred to as the Taconic Orogeny
Taconic orogeny
The Taconic orogeny was a mountain building period that ended 440 million years ago and affected most of modern-day New England. A great mountain chain formed from eastern Canada down through what is now the Piedmont of the East coast of the United States...
, caused the formation to fold, thrust, and uplift above sea level, where later layers were eroded away and the schist was exposed. The Bar Harbor Formation, which is made up predominantly of sands and silts, and Cranberry Island Formation, made up from volcanic ash and magmatic debris, occurred under similar circumstances in the Silurian
Silurian
The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...
and Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
periods, and were deposited on top of the Ellsworth Schist. However, due to less tectonic activity at that time, their deformation was less severe.
As mentioned above, quarrying of granite was historically an important industry. Due to orogenic activity during the Devonian, Mount Desert Island has three 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...
units, the Cadillac Mountain granite, the fine grained Somesville granite, and the medium grained Somesville granite. Surrounding DCg, is a zone of breccia
Breccia
Breccia is a rock composed of broken fragments of minerals or rock cemented together by a fine-grained matrix, that can be either similar to or different from the composition of the fragments....
ted material, known as DSz (Devonian Shatter Zone).
Most recently, Mount Desert Island was host to the Laurentide Ice Sheet
Laurentide ice sheet
The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered hundreds of thousands of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the northern United States, multiple times during Quaternary glacial epochs. It last covered most of northern North America between c. 95,000 and...
as it extended and receded during the Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
epoch. The glacier left a number of visible marks upon the landscape, such as Bubble Rock, a glacial erratic
Glacial erratic
A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres...
carried 19 miles by the ice sheet from a Lucerne granite outcrop and deposited precariously on the side of South Bubble Mountain in Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park
Acadia National Park is a National Park located in the U.S. state of Maine. It reserves much of Mount Desert Island, and associated smaller islands, off the Atlantic coast...
. Other such examples are the moraines deposited at the southern ends of many of the glacier-carved valleys on the Island such as the Jordan Pond valley, indicating the extent of the glacier; and the beach sediments located in a regressional sequence beneath and around Jordan Pond, indicating the rebound of the continent after the glacier's recession approximately 25,000 years ago.
Ecology
Excavations of old Indian sites in the Mount Desert Island region have yielded remains of the native mammals. Bones of wolf, North American beaver (Castor canadensis), deer, elk, Gray seal (Halichoerus grypus), the Indian dogIndian dog
Indian dog may refer to:* Dhole of India, also known as the Indian Wild Dog, Cuon alpinus* Hare Indian dog, an extinct dog breed originally kept by the Hare Indians of Canada...
, and Sea Mink
Sea Mink
The Sea Mink, Neovison macrodon, is an extinct North American member of the family Mustelidae. It is the only mustelid, and one of only two terrestrial mammal species in the order Carnivora, to become extinct in historic times . The body of the sea mink was significantly longer than that of the...
(Neovison macrodon), as well as large numbers of raccoon, lynx, wolf, muskrat, and deer. Although beaver were trapped to extinction on the island, two pairs of beaver that were released in 1920 by George B. Dorr at the brook between Bubble Pond and Eagle Lake have repopulated it. A large fire in 1947 cleared the eastern half of the island of its coniferous trees and permitted the growth of aspen, birch, alder, maple and other deciduous trees which enabled the beaver to thrive.
See also
- Otter Cliffs Radio StationOtter Cliffs Radio StationU.S. Naval Radio Station Otter Cliffs was a United States Navy radio receiver facility located in Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island, south of Bar Harbor, Maine.The station was commissioned on August 28, 1917, under the command of Lt...
- Acadia National ParkAcadia National ParkAcadia National Park is a National Park located in the U.S. state of Maine. It reserves much of Mount Desert Island, and associated smaller islands, off the Atlantic coast...
- List of islands of Maine