THE EARLY HISTORY OF MOUNT DESERT ISLAND

MT. DESERT NATIONAL PARK HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS

Bar Harbor Record
Sept. 28, 1918

An address delivered by George E. Googins, Esq., at the anneal meeting of the Maine State Board, held at Bar Harbor, Me. September 24, 1918.

The Mount Desert national Park on Mount Desert Island covers an area of five thousand acres or nearly one-twelfth of the whole island.  It stretches from sea to sea, extending westerly from a point near the Brunnow cottage, on the Schooner Head Road, to within about 200 rods of Somes Sound.  Beginning at a point near Seal Harbor and running northeasterly to the Eagle lake Road, near Great Pond Hill, the distance is about five miles.  One half of the park is in the town of Mount Desert and the other half in Bar Harbor.
In 1916 the land was donated to the National Government by the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations as a National Monument, and President Wilson proclaimed it the Sieur de Monts National Monument.  Congress appropriated $10,000.
The object of changing its status and converting it into a National Park was to secure its proportional part of the land appropriated annually for the maintenance of our National Parks.  It is the result of the efforts on the part of certain public-spirited gentlemen to preserve as much of the natural scenery and wild life of the island as possible, and their spontaneous gifts have placed in the hands of the National Government what virtually amounts to the whole mountain system of the island.  It also includes Jordon's pond and Bubble Pond.
Within the park are the following mountains;  Newport, Picket, Dry, Green, The White Caps, Pemetic, the Triads, Jordan, Sargent and the Bubbles.
This is the first National Park to be established east of the Mississippi River, but let us hope that it may not be the last.  It is the only one containing both ocean and mountain scenery.  What striking differences mingle and blend to make this island the enchanting spot it is.  No park of its kind will ever excel it in the grandeur and variety of its scenery.
"Two voices are there, one is of the sea, one of the mountains, each a mighty voice."
Mount Desert Island is fifteen miles long and seven miles wide, containing about 60,000 acres.  There are thirteen lakes and thirteen mountains, but few of them bereft of story.  Green Mountain, the largest, towers 1500 feet above the level of the sea.  Its massive brow looks down upon the island-dotted waters of Frenchman's Bay, and out upon the great restless ocean, across the Bay of Fundy, to the land of Evangeline.
Whitter the poet, in his legend of Mogg Megone, has described in fascinating verse the wonderful panoramic view that greets the eye of the tourist as he stands on the top of Green Mountain, gazing afar on the landscape unfolding before him, and the ocean breaking madly upon the rockbound shores below.
From the summit of Green Mountain on a clear day, one can see the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Camden Hills on the Penobscot and old Katahdin one hundred and thirty miles north as the bird flies.  With the aid of the glass, one can, when the atmospheric conditions are favorable, see the coast of Nova Scotia.
In the days of the Green Mountain Railway, thousands of summer tourists journeyed across Eagle Lake in the little steamer and ascended the mountain by rail.  It was a great delightful ride, on a bright summer day, and the scenic view which was afforded the traveler was well worth the trip.  A sunrise seen from the top of Green Mountain is most beautiful sight, and the summer visitors often ascend the mountain over night to witness the coming up of the sun as if out of the ocean itself.
The railway is gone, and so to is the quaint-looking steamer with her one big wheel in the stern, but Green Mountain still stands and the broad lake shimmers in the morning sun.  In 1888 a carriage road was built to the top of Green Mountain.  since than numerous paths have been blazed through the forest and up the steep mountain ravines.  The park will be easily accessible to the motorist and the pedestrian by road and bridal path.  The roads on Mount Desert Island, surrounding the park, are the best in the state.  Bar Harbor expends on her roads many thousand dollars annually.
The island has been an attraction to summer residents from the earliest times.  Our first visitors were the Indians.  The sublimely and loveliness of the scenery pleased the eye of the savage long before the white man had left his footprints upon its whitened sands.  Over the placid waters of the bay, where the palatial yachts of millionaires now sail, the buoyant canoe of the Indian once glided in perfect safety.
It has well been said - Mount Desert is remarkable for its size, its singular topography, its bold and wild scenery, and still more for its wilder and stranger history.
This is not only the oldest part of America, geologically speaking, but here on the Maine coast, within sight of these mountains, were enacted some of the first scenes in American History.  The historical associations surrounding this island will give emphasis to the importance of the Mount Desert National Park.
The Indians called the Island Pemetic.  Champlain came as early as 1604 to name it the Isle of the Desert Mountain - hence Mount Desert.  The English called it Mount Mansell in honor of a distinguished naval officer.  But the name bestowed by Champlain was restored and will endure.
Its traditions are more French than English.  The island was discovered by a Frenchman and was afterwards owned by Cadillac, the founder of Detriot.  The de Gregoires acquired title to the northeastern half of the island in 1787.  All the real estate titles here in Bar Harbor are based upon the title of the de Gregoires.  They lived at Hulls Cove.
It was Champlain who first discovered that these mountains are separated from the mainland.  In his journal, under date of September 5, 1604, he wrote;  "From the island to the mainland on the north, the distance is not more than a hundred paces."  The place designated by Champlain is the present site of the Trenton Bridge, which connects Mount Desert Island with the mainland.
Samuel Champlain was the geographer of the Sieur de Monts expedition of 1604-05.  De Monts having been given a royal charter from King Henry 4 of France of the vast territory lying between the 46th and 40th parallels of north latitude, attempted to plant a colony south of Port Royal in Acadia.
De Monts landed his colonists at St. Croix Island, or the St. Croix river, in the summer of 1604.  Champlain in one of the vessels sailed down the coast for the purpose of exploration.  He visited Mount Desert Island, the Pentecost River, and also the Kennebec.  The names which he gave to some of our islands still endure.
The French colony at St. Croix failed.  But in 1613, Madame de Guercheville, having acquired the Royal patent of Sieur de Monts, sent a colony to the Maine coast.  It was her purpose to convert the American Indians to Christianity.  She pursuaded two Jesuit priests, Father Biard and Father Masse, to enlist in the work.  The colonists had intended to go to Kadesquit on the Penobscot river, but a thick fog compelled them to land at Mount Desert island.
The Jesuits located their colony at Fernalds Point on Somes Sound.  Here, in the profound solitude of the wilderness they reared their lowly huts.  But even in this isolated spot they were not to be left to the enjoyment of their new world homes.  England claimed the country by the right of discovery, and Gov. Dale of South Virginia in the summer of 1613 sent Capt. Samual Argall up the coast to root out the French.
Learning that there was a French colony at Mount desert, Capt. Argall, guided by a Pentecost Indian, ran his vessel into Somes Sound and opened fire upon the French.  La Saussaye, the French Governor of St. Sauveur, fled to the woods at the sound of hostile cannon.  the place was captured and the Jesuits taken prisoners.
In this fight, the first battle between white men in North America - Gilbert du Thet, "A lay brother," was killed, and Capt. Flory was wounded.  The shot that killed du Thet was the spark that kindled the prolonged struggle between England and France for the mastery of North America.  Among those mountain glens echoed the first gun that was fired in that sanguinary conflict, which lasted a century and a half and ended at Quebec when Montcalm and Wolfe lay expiring on the plains of Abraham.
Maine was a battlefield during all that time.  Here, in sight of these picturesque hills, were fought some of the important naval battles of that period;  here, upon those rocky shores the Baron Castine mobilized his dusky warriors, the Tarratines and Mic-macs for the assault upon fort William Henry at Pemaquid.
The glittering dream of the Frenchman of the seventeenth century of a new France did not wholly fade from his national horizon, until the capture of Quebec by Wolfe.
For a century Acadia was the football of European politics, now processed by France, and now by england.  As late as the middle of the eighteenth century France claimed the territoriality as far west as the Kennebec River.  The French had a small settlement at Pentagoet, where the Baron Castine traded with the Indians.
There was not a white settler on Mount Desert Island.  The Indians came hither to hunt and trap the fur bearing mammals that dwelt here - the bear, raccoon, fox, otter, beaver and musquash.  Every summer the Indians with their families came to the island to hold their annual feasts.  The great piles of shells which they left behind bear silent witness to the Red Man's taste for Maine's most delectable mollusk - the clam.  Nor did they have to depend wholly on the sea for their food.  The ponds and streams were well stocked with speckled trout.  The mountain cranberry, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry and huckleberry grew here in abundance;  while the primitive fields were filled with wild flowers - bluebells, white and yellow water lilies, the twin flower and wild roses - all perfuming the air with their sweet fragrance.
No wonder the early inhabitants called this town Eden.  The Mount Desert national Park will preserve as much of this wild life as remains, and the trees, shrubs, and flowers of the island.  And the animals such as once lived here will be brought back to the native haunts of their ancestors - the deer, fox, beaver and bear.
After the French and Indian war, that is, 1759, the tide of immigration set eastward, the settlers came pouring into our bays and rivers looking for suitable building sites.  Nearly all the towns east of the Penobscot were first settled in the ten years preceding the American Revolution.  Those pioneers, during that struggle for independence, held the country for the American Colonies.
The first permanent settlement on Mount Desert Island was made in 1762 by Abraham Somes and James Richardson.  Their descendants are numerous on the island.
Mount Desert Island at this time was owned by Sir Francis Bernard the last royal governor of Massachusetts.  It was incorporated as a plantation in 1776 and as a town in 1789.  It included the Cranberry and Placentia Islands.  In 1796 the town of eden was incorporated.  The name was changed to Bar Harbor last March.
In the first half century of its existence the town of Eden assumed no greater importance than that of a prosperous fishing hamlet.  Than came the transformation period.  The first hotel was the Agamont, burned in 1888.  It was built by Tobias Roberts in 1858.  The first non-resident cottage was built ten years later by Mr. Alpheus Hardy of Boston.  It is still standing on the point below the Mount desert reading room.
Bar Harbor became better known in the seventies when Captain Charles Deering began running his steamer, the City of Lewiston, to this harbor.  She was followed by the City of Richmond and the Frank Jones.
The Maine Coast towns lost a faithful friend when the Frank Jones was sold and taken from the Portland-Machia's route.  Her passing augured nothing good for Bar Harbor and eastern Maine.  The coming of the railroad to Mount Desert ferry in 1884, stimulated the social life of Bar Harbor as it brought many new people to this resort.  But the railroad service did not altogether replace the demand for steamboats.  For the transportation of freight from Portland and other points west the steamboat is certainly the most suitable and the least expensive mode of conveyance.  Now that the ship building industry of Maine is reviving, let us hope that the business of our eastern coast towns will warrant the re-establishment of another steamboat service between Portland and Machias.
The man who first introduced picturesque Bar Harbor to the world was the artist by the name of church.  He painted beautiful pictures of the scenery of Mount desert, which advertised the place far and wide.  That was about 1850.
About the same time Henry D. Thoreau, a philosopher and naturalist, was writing graphic descriptions of the Maine woods which attracted universal attention.  In his birch canoe, with a single Indian guide, Thoreau had penetrated the vast wilderness of Northern Maine, visiting the Moosehead and Mt. Katahdin regions.  He was the first white man to climb to the summit of Mt. Katahdin.
Attracted by Thoreau's wonderful stories, sportsmen soon began to make annual trips to Moosehead for the big game that abounded in that region.  A hotel was built at Kineo.  Thousands of tourists now visit the Moosehead and Rangely regions every year.
I mention this bit of narrative simply to show the contemporaneous history of the Moosehead region and Mount Desert Island since the middle of the last century.  It is a singular coincidence that the two bills before congress for the establishment of National Parks in Maine should apply to the regions first introduced by Church and Thoreau.  Their development, as summer playgrounds, has been cutaneous.
The re creative industry in the State of Maine can not be too strongly emphasized.  The state is millions of dollars richer because of the picturesque scenery of our seacoast, and because of the big game that dwell in our forest.  Bar harbor has grown from an insignificant fishing hamlet in church's time to a fashionable summer resort.  In 1860 the valuation of the town was $158,464.  It is now about seven millions, or one-sixtieths of the whole valuation of the state.  The valuation of the four towns on Mount Desert Island is one half of the total valuation of Hancock county.  Bar Harbor pays an annual State tax of $41,000 and a county tax of $8,000.
The idea of preserving for future generations our forest and mountain scenery, is one of the most sensible yet conceived by those who have the welfare of our island at heart.  Civilization in its rapid strides too often fails to respect the primitive conditions of the country;  and civilized man in his race for wealth or personal aggrandizement does not always regard the comforts and pleasures of posterity.  A National park here amid these ancient hills will preserve the scenic beauty of our island which in past has and still does attract millions of dollars to eastern Maine.
A forest reservation or sanctuary in Northern Maine as described in the Guernsey bill would be of great value to the future generations of Maine.  For the millions who would visit it would ride on Maine railroads, put up at Maine hotels, employ Maine guides and consume the products of our farms.
Such a reservation would preserve our forestry which is the key to Maine's future property.  It would preserve our water power, which is slowly being developed, but which will sometime be the foundation of enormous wealth to the State of Maine.
I would like to pay a deserving tribute to the man whose generosity and public spirit have made the Mount Desert national Park Possible.  But my time has expired.  I am sure that the historian of the future will give to each the mead of praise he deserves, if not, than this park itself will speak to future generations of their noble work.