THE Abenaki Indians called it “Pemetic,” “the sloping land.” In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine working for French and Italian bankers, was the first European to record the sighting of Mount Desert Island. Eighty years later, it was visited by Samuel de Champlain, representing Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, who had been designated lieutenant-general of New France by King Henry IV and granted a 10-year fur monopoly. Coasting down from a French settlement in Nova Scotia, Champlain named it L’isle des Monts Deserts, or “Island of the Barren Mounts.” He struck a shoal off Otter Point and landed September 5, 1604 to repair his ship and to explore.
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With the assassination of Henry IV, de Monts lost royal favor, and his patent was bought by Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville. This rich and virtuous lady founded the short-lived Jesuit mission on Fernald Point in Somes Sound in 1613. It was destroyed by Captain Samuel Argall, under British orders to clear the coast of Frenchmen.
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In 1688, Antoine Laumet successfully petitioned Louis XIV for an enormous grant of land in New France, including Mount Desert Island. Adopting the title of Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, he brought his bride to Mount Desert to establish a feudal estate. This romantic scheme failed for unknown reasons, and Cadillac went on to found Detroit, but his name lives on here at Cadillac Mountain, the tallest mountain on the Atlantic coast north of Brazil.
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With the conquest of Quebec by General James Wolfe in 1759, the British finally won their long struggle with the French, and the lands of New France were up for grabs. Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts coveted Mount Desert and persuaded Abraham Somes and other families to colonize the island in 1761, but the Revolution nullified Bernard’s claims. After the Revolution, the General Court of Massachusetts split the island between two claimants. The western half went to Bernard’s son, the eastern half to Marie Theresa de Gregoire, granddaughter of Cadillac.
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In the mid-19th century, Mount Desert became fashionable. Hotels sprang up as bases for campers, naturalists, and artists. Rusticators, as the summer people were labeled, built camps, and the wealthy started to build imposing “cottages.” “The Briars” was built in 1881 for J. Montgomery Sears of Boston, “Stanwood” in 1885 for James G. Blaine of Maine, “Casa Far Niente” for S. Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia, “Chatwold” in 1894 for publisher Joseph Pulitzer of New York, and so on, each trying to outdo the others. The roster of people who summered on Mount Desert included Vanderbilts and Fords, Carnegies and Astors, Rockefellers and Morgans. But by the time E.J. Stotesbury built his 80-room mansion in 1925, the Great Depression was just over the horizon, the automobile was opening up Mount Desert to the public, and the era of grand “cottages” was coming to a close.
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The coup de grace came less than two decades later. A sign in Acadia National Park relates the sad tale: “In October 1947, a series of fires lasting 26 days ravaged more than 25 square miles of Mount Desert Island. Bar Harbor was severely threatened, and most of the landscape in front of you was transformed into an apparent wasteland. The fire consumed 170 homes of year-round residents. Over 60 summer mansions burned, leaving only chimneys and garden statues standing. One third of the park woodlands burned before the flames died at the ocean’s edge.”
From A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast