DOWNEAST MAINE NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA
MDI: THE ETERNAL SUMMERING DESTINATION
Mount Desert Island’ s natural beauty and outdoor recreation assets have attracted summer visitors for over 150 years and today attract millions of people each year. Before the Island became a popular vacation destination, it was home to the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot people. While a small population lived on the island year-round, it served as a seasonal summer gathering place for people from across the Wabanaki homeland to camp, hunt, fish, forage, trade, and socialize.
Place names of the region carry these stories forward, although traditional seasonal migrations no longer occur. Bar Harbor, for example, translates to“ the clam digging place”. A location near modern day Northeast Harbor was the central meeting place called astuwiku( Asticou) translated to“ it comes together”. What is now Mount Desert Island was known as Pemetic, meaning“ range of mountains.”
Downeast Maine’ s transformation as a vacation destination began during the 1840s when artists of the Hudson River School captured the region’ s dramatic landscapes in paintings and exhibited them in eastern cities. These artists ultimately spurred a unique tourism movement of nature-loving wealthy and elite, called the“ Rusticators” because of their appreciation for a‘ rustic’ vacation experience.
In the later 1800s, Rusticators traveled to Mount Desert Island by yacht, train, steamboat, and stagecoach. A few of those Rusticators- in particular Charles Eliot, George B. Dorr, and John D. Rockefeller- were passionate about the natural beauty of Downeast Maine and inspired private conservation efforts that ultimately led to the creation of Acadia National Park.
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By 1890, Mount Desert Island boasted about 20,000 summer residents, and Mount Desert Island, especially Bar Harbor, became one of the most fashionable summer destinations in the country. What is now Acadia National Park was composed almost entirely of private land donations and designated in 1916 as Lafayette National Park. The Schoodic section was added in 1929, and the entire park was renamed Acadia.