Bar Harbor, Maine City Guide
For over 20 years, Pamela Lanier's Bar Harbor, Maine Travel Guide has been your connection to Bar Harbor's tourism community with invaluable details on local attractions, restaurants, shopping, museums, history, outdoor recreation and more.
Bar Harbor History
Bar Harbor, situated on the eastern shore of Mount Desert Island, was the seasonal hunting and fishing grounds for the Wabanaki Indians, an Algonquin tribe that inhabited the New England area of the United States as well as Québec and Maritime provinces of Canada. Mount Desert Island, located in Frenchman Bay is where French explorer Samuel de Champlain ran aground in 1604, naming the island Isles des Monts Deserts, “island of barren mountains”. There is evidence that the waters here were rich in clams and shellfish and the landscape abundant with berries. The first English settlers arrived in 1763 and industry would soon develop. Fishing, lumbering, shipbuilding and agriculture would sustain the population. By the 1840’s the beautiful scenery had been discovered by the Hudson River School of landscape painters and shortly thereafter the Luminism artists. These breathtaking landscapes inspired the development of tourism and Bar Harbor’s first hotel, the Agamont House opened in 1855. There were soon to be 30 hotels and estates being built by the wealthy looking to escape the summer heat in the eastern sea board cities. Nelson Rockefeller was born here in 1908.
In 1947, a wildfire ripped across the eastern side of Mount Desert Island destroying in its wake hundreds of homes and hotels as well as thousands of acres of the Acadia National Park. Though the damage was devastating, Bar Harbor has recovered and developed a thriving tourism industry. This flourishing island city continues to attractbed and breakfast visitors from around the world.
