Acadia National Park Map

Most of Acadia is located on Mount Desert Island, just off the central Maine coast. Separate areas of the park lie on the Schoodic Peninsula, on the mainland to the east, and on Isle au Haut, a small island to the southwest. The Wabanaki Indians called Mount Desert Pemetic, “the sloping land,” and it’s true that flat places are scarce here. Glaciers, which retreated around 17,000 years ago, cut narrow valleys now filled with lakes and arms of the Atlantic Ocean and carved steep cliffs.

Glaciers also scoured granite mountaintops, leaving little soil to support forest. The lack of trees caused French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who sailed past in 1604, to call the island Monts Desert (barren mountains).

In the 19th century, Mount Desert Island’s beauty and remoteness began attracting wealthy visitors looking for a retreat from bustling cities. Vanderbilts, Astors, Carnegies, and other illustrious families built magnificent mansions (which they called “cottages”) on the island’s northeast coast. The area became known as Millionaires’ Row. As the 20th century arrived, the town of Bar Harbor had dozens of hotels, and people began to worry that Mount Desert was losing the qualities that had made it so attractive.

Some of the wealthy part-time residents began using their influence to push for a national park on the island. Among them was oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who donated nearly 11,000 acres to what was then called Lafayette National Park. (The name was changed to Acadia in 1929.) The first national park in the East, Acadia grew bit by bit over the years, and now it occupies 50,000 acres, including about half of Mount Desert Island.

Massive fires in 1947 destroyed large areas of Maine, including more than 10,000 acres in Acadia—and also brought about a major change in the island’s ecology. Spruce-fir coniferous forest once dominated Mount Desert, but the fire created open areas that were colonized by faster-growing hardwood trees, such as birch, aspen, and maple. In fall, the many-hued foliage of these hardwoods blazes brightly, recalling the “year that Maine burned.”

US National Parks Map

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