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.