Mount Desert Island - Acadia National Park

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 6,000 acres (24 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 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.

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 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 was changed to Acadia National Park.

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.

• Acadia National Park

• An Acadia carriage road