Sights—Sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain; the view of Frenchman Bay from Schoodic Point; standing on the deck of a catamaran in the Atlantic, watching a whale spouting.
Museums—Native American arts and crafts at the Abbe Museum in downtown Bar Harbor; natural history and local lore at the Oceanarium; lifelike bird carvings at the Wendell Gilley Museum of Bird Carving.
Memorable Meals—Fresh fish at Maggie's; popovers at the Jordan Pond House; Maine-blueberry pancakes at Jordan's.
Late Night—Comedy at ImprovAcadia; dancing at Carmen Verandah.
Walks—A stroll along the Shore Path, with views of Frenchman Bay and magnificent old summer cottages; hiking up Great Head Trail in Acadia National Park.
Especially for Kids—Explore beaches and tidal pools for shells and other wildlife; experience Diver Ed's impromptu touch tank on a Dive-In Theater Boat Cruise; see puffins, seals and whales on a whale-watching expedition; become a junior ranger at Acadia National Park.
Bar Harbor is a small coastal town on Mount Desert Island, the largest of about 3,500 islands off the Maine coast and the largest rock-based island on the Atlantic. The town is surrounded on three sides by Acadia National Park, one of the country's most-visited national parks, and the rocky shores of the Atlantic on its fourth side. The town itself is 28,000 acres/11,331 hectares; it is 28 mi/45 km long from west to east and enjoys a coastline roughly as long.
After you cross the bridge from the mainland, there are two routes into Bar Harbor: Route 3 leads to the downtown section and is considered the more direct and traditional route. Route 102 winds through the quaint village of Town Hill, with its stately farms and artists' studios.
The first seasonal visitors to Mount Desert Island were Native Americans who lived on the mainland but went to the coast in summer to escape the heat and to exploit abundant food resources. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain became one of the first Europeans to visit the island when he ran aground there in 1604. He named the island L'Isle des Monts Deserts for the rocky, barren mountain summits he saw. For centuries before then, the Abenaki people had stalked deer, fished, dug clams and built birchbark canoes along the island's shores. It wasn't until 1763 that English fisherfolk and farmers established themselves and named their town Eden—thus the street's name. Eden Street is about the only remaining imprint of those early settlers: Their legacy was eclipsed during the next century.
In the mid-1800s, Bar Harbor attracted poets and artists, who were soon followed by wealthy U.S. tycoons who visited each summer to rusticate, as they called it, in the wild. The area's blossoming tourism development can be credited mainly to Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, notable and influential artists of the Hudson River School. Soon, wealthy art patrons with a desire to explore the area they so often saw captured in paintings began to seek respite in the area's dramatic landscapes. The first significant hotel catering to the influx of visitors was built in 1885. Although many hotels followed, there was a limit to how rustic these visitors were willing to get. Still desiring the comforts of home, many visitors built their own palatial Newport-like cottages to serve as their summer residences.
This world of privilege was wiped out by the Great Fire of 1947, which leveled most of the mansions. (An early newspaper report suggested that the blaze was started by townspeople who were disgruntled by the community's growing opulence, but it turned out that a dropped cigarette was the culprit.) Bar Harbor was rebuilt as a more democratic resort, with hotels and motels largely replacing the summer palaces. Some of those same inns are chock-full these days during the brief Maine summer, when the village's permanent population of close to 5,000 swells tenfold with present-day rusticators.
Bar Island, an islet less than a mile/kilometer offshore from Mount Desert Island, is accessible for two hours before and after low tide by crossing the sandbar at the foot of Bridge Street (you can pick up a tide chart at the Chamber of Commerce or check the
Mount Desert Islander). The sandbar gave both the village and the little island their names.
The Hope Diamond was once owned by a resident of Bar Harbor, Evalyn Walsh McLean. The story goes that local children were allowed to play with it on the lawn of the great house.
Eastern Maine (north of Augusta, east of Bangor) is known as "down east" because, in seafaring times, schooners sailing from Boston to Maine traveled to the north and east and thus downwind of the prevailing southwest winds.
Lifestyle maven Martha Stewart has a summer cottage called Skylands in Seal Harbor, near Bar Harbor. The estate was originally built for Edsel Ford.
The voice of the television show Law and Order, Steve Zinkilton, lives in Seal Harbor.
Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park is 1,532 ft/474 m high. It is the highest point within 50 mi/80 km of the sea from Maine to Rio de Janeiro. At certain times of the year, observers on top of Cadillac Mountain can be the first in the U.S. to see the sun rise on a new day.
About 90% of all U.S. lobsters are caught in Maine. Lobsters are only red once they have been cooked. In nature, they are a mottled brownish-green. On rare occasions they can be blue, yellow and even two-toned.
Some of the cobblestones that pave Boston's tony Beacon Hill neighborhood were transplanted from the beaches of Mount Desert Island. It is now illegal to remove stones from Acadia National Park.
Hidden amidst the grandeur of this oceanside resort are more than 2 million mutant mice. The Jackson Laboratory, which sits right at the edge of Bar Harbor, is one of the world's leading genetic research centers. It supplies nearly 3,000 varieties of specially bred mice for cancer, disease and neurological studies.
In November 1944, two German spies landed on Crabtree Neck beach in Hancock, across the bay from Bar Harbor. The two men had orders to send reports of U.S. life back to Germany via cable telegrams. Their landing site is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of only two places in the U.S. where German spies gained access to the country during World War II.
Wild blueberries are tastier than their cultivated counterparts because they are smaller. Most of the taste in a blueberry is in the skin, and smaller berries have a higher skin-to-pulp ratio.
