Mount Desert Island


Mount Desert Island is the largest island of Maine, United States. Lying in Hancock County off the north-central coast, it has an area of, making it the sixth-largest island in the contiguous United States, and the second-largest island on the Eastern Seaboard, behind Long Island and ahead of Martha's Vineyard. According to the 2010 census, the island has a year-round population of 10,615. In 2017, an estimated 3.5 million tourists visited Acadia National Park on MDI. The island is home to numerous well-known summer colonies such as Northeast Harbor and Bar Harbor.

Origin of the name

Some residents stress the second syllable, while others pronounce it like the English common noun desert. French explorer Samuel de Champlain'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 L’Isle des Monts-déserts.

Towns and villages

There are four towns on Mount Desert Island:
  • Bar Harbor, with the villages of Eden, Hulls Cove, Salisbury Cove, and Town Hill;
  • Mount Desert, with the villages of Hall Quarry, Northeast Harbor, Otter Creek, Pretty Marsh, Seal Harbor, and Somesville;
  • Southwest Harbor, with the villages of Manset and Seawall;
  • Tremont, with the villages of Bass Harbor, Bernard, Gotts Island, Seal Cove, and West Tremont.

    History

Indigenous peoples and early habitation

Archaeological evidence, including extensive shell middens, indicates continuous Indigenous habitation of Mount Desert Island for at least 6,000 years. The Wabanaki peoples, particularly the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy nations of the Abenaki linguistic group, called the island Pemetic, meaning "the sloping land".
Archaeological evidence suggests Native Americans wintered on the coast to avoid harsh inland conditions and take advantage of marine resources, then moved inland during summers for salmon runs and forest gathering. The Wabanaki constructed bark-covered conical dwellings and traveled in birchbark canoes that European observers praised for their design and speed.

French colonial period (1604–1759)

French exploration

The first documented European encounter occurred on September 6, 1604, when Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons led an exploring party from the St. Croix Settlement. Sailing in a patache with twelve sailors and two Indigenous guides while searching for the rumored city of Norumbega, Samuel de Champlain crossed Frenchman Bay toward Otter Creek. During high tide, their vessel struck a ledge off what is now Otter Cliff, and while making repairs, two Indigenous people boarded as guides.
Champlain recorded: "Le sommet de la plus part d'icelles est desgarny d'arbres parceque ce ne sont que roches. Je l'ay nommée l'Isle des Monts-déserts".

Saint-Sauveur Mission and the 1613 raid

In 1613, French Jesuit missionaries established Saint-Sauveur Mission on present-day Fernald Point near Somes Sound—the first French Catholic mission in North America. On July 2, 1613, Virginia colonial captain Samuel Argall arrived aboard the Treasurer and destroyed the mission. Three missionaries were killed, three wounded, and approximately twenty prisoners were taken to Jamestown. Argall destroyed the buildings, replaced the Catholic cross with a Protestant one, then continued to eliminate French settlements at Saint Croix Island and Port-Royal.
Claude de La Tour quickly established a fur-trading post at nearby Castine to maintain French influence.

Cadillac's land grant

In 1688, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac received a royal grant for along the Maine coast, including all of Mount Desert Island. Despite ambitious plans for a feudal estate, Cadillac and his wife abandoned the project after a brief residence. Cadillac later founded Detroit. The island's highest peak, Cadillac Mountain, bears his name and is among the first places in the United States to receive morning sunlight during fall and winter months.

Queen Anne's War raids

During Queen Anne's War, Mount Desert Island served as a staging ground for English raids against Acadian settlements. In 1704, Benjamin Church gathered forces at the island before conducting raids on Castine, St. Stephen, Grand-Pré, and other Acadian communities.

British colonial period (1759–1775)

The British conquest of Acadia in 1759 opened Maine coastal lands for British colonial settlement. Sir Francis Bernard, royal governor of Massachusetts, secured a land grant for Mount Desert Island and recruited settlers by offering free land. In 1760, Abraham Somes and James Richardson became the island's first permanent European settlers, establishing homesteads at present-day Somesville.

Revolutionary period and early statehood (1775–1850)

The American Revolution disrupted Bernard's colonization plans. As a Loyalist, he lost his land claims following American independence. Massachusetts granted the western half of Mount Desert Island to John Bernard and the eastern half to Marie Thérèse de Grégoire. Both quickly sold to absentee landlords.
By Maine's statehood in 1820, the island supported farming, lumbering, fishing, and shipbuilding. Settlers cleared hundreds of acres, producing everything from schooners to household goods. Agriculture focused on wheat, rye, corn, and potatoes. By 1850, fishing fleets, fish-processing facilities, and shipyards dominated the landscape. Granite quarrying became important, taking advantage of high-quality stone deposits near deep-water anchorages for shipping to major East Coast cities.

Rusticators

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, inspired patrons and friends to flock here. Called rusticators, despite the lack of existing accommodations they sought out local fishermen and farmers to put them up for a modest fee. The rusticators returned to renew friendships with local islanders and, most of all, to savor the fresh salt air, 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.
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, Morgans, Fords, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, 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, 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, and the planting plans for subtle roads at Acadia National Park sponsored by John D. Rockefeller Jr.. 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.

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 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 Wilson 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. In 1929, the park name was changed to Acadia National Park.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. endowed 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 about of carriage roads around the eastern half of the island. These roads were closed to automobiles and included several vistas and stone bridges. About of these roads are within Acadia National Park and open only to hikers, bicyclists, horseback riders, horse-drawn carriages and cross country skiers.
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.
In 1986, Friends of Acadia, the nonprofit organization that directs private philanthropy and volunteerism for the benefit of Acadia National Park, was founded.