Acadia National Park, a place I’ve loved over the years, takes center stage as today’s #stampoftheday because on July 8, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson created Sieur de Monts National Monument, which later became the heart of the park.

The park was featured on a 7-cent stamp issued in 1934 as part of a series of 10 stamps showcasing notable National Parks. The series was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an avid stamp collector, who personally oversaw the selection of stamp subjects and designs. As Roosevelt was reviewing suggestions for the 1934 schedule, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes saw an opportunity to advertise the national park system. FDR immediately approved the idea and ten parks – Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainer, Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, Crater Lake, Acadia, Zion, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountain – were chosen and pictured on a stamps that ranged in value from 1 to 10 cents. (Since these stamps were issued between July and October, I expect to feature more of them in the weeks and months ahead.)

The park consists of almost 77 square miles of land that covers about half of Mount Desert Island, many adjacent smaller islands, and part of the Schoodic Peninsula northeast of Mount Desert Island. Key sites on Mount Desert Island include Cadillac Mountain-the tallest mountain on the eastern coastline which is one of the first places in the United States where one can watch the sunrise, as well as Somes Sound, a five-mile-long fjord formed during a glacial period that reshaped the entire island.
The Wabanaki people were some of the first known residents of present-day Acadia, arriving as much as 5,000 years ago. They called Mount Desert Island Pemetic, which means “range of mountains” or “the sloping land.” In 1604, French explorer Samuel de Champlain ran aground at Mount Desert Island and gave the mountain its current name. The French established a mission on the island in 1613 and were in the process of building a fort and baptizing natives when an English ship, led by Captain Samuel Argall, arrived and destroyed the mission. With the French in control of the area north of the island and British in the south, there was little European activity on the island for about 150 years.

A British victory over the French in 1759 made the island part of New England until the American Revolution saw the island added to the newly formed United States of America. Soon, American homesteaders arrived at the island. By 1820, farming, lumbering, fishing, and shipbuilding were the area’s major occupations. Hundreds of acres of trees were cut down for commercial use.

In the mid-1800s, artists of the Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, popularized the island to outsiders, and soon there were 30 hotels on the island and tourism was among the island’s main industries. The island also became a popular retreat for wealthy families, many of whom built lavish houses with breathtaking views. These included Charles Eliot, a noted landscape architect who in the early 1880s convinced his father, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot, to build a summer mansion in the area, and the parents of George Dorr, heir to a textile fortune, who had strong ties to Harvard (where he led fundraising for Emerson Hall and helped the university acquire land between Harvard Yard and the Charles River).

In 1901, a few years after his son had died, President Eliot called a meeting of many of the wealthy homeowners to form a committee that would – via purchase or donations – acquire and hold “points of interest on this Island, for the perpetual use of the public.” Eliot asked Dorr, who mainly lived on the island, to lead the committee, which in 1903 created the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, a non-profit charged with preserving the island’s scenic qualities. The non-profit built a noted springhouse and beginning in 1915, wealthy philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. paid for, designed, and oversaw the construction of 57 miles of carriage trails through the park. An expert road builder, Rockefeller’s trails featured sweeping vistas and remarkable close-up views of the natural sights.

Concerned that the non-profit was primarily benefiting the island’s wealthy summer residents, in 1913 the Maine Legislature began looking into its nonprofit status. While Dorr successfully stopped this effort, the fight convinced him that the land needed the greater protection of the federal government. Drawing on the network of influential people who summered in the area, he launched an intensive lobbying campaign to secure federal protection. While Dorr and his allies wanted to establish a national park, they were concerned it would take too long to get Congress to approve the needed legislation. So they focused on getting President Wilson to designate the area as a national monument, which he did in July 1916. Dorr was appointed as the monument’s first superintendent.

Over time, more land was added and in 1919, it achieved a new status as Lafayette National Park, making it the first National Park east of the Mississippi River. Ten years after achieving National Park status, it was renamed Acadia – in honor of the French who originally called the area Arcadia – meaning refuge or idyllic place. During his years overseeing the park, Dorr, who was superintendent until he died in 1944, demanded everything be of the highest quality, and nothing be done that might harm the park’s unsurpassed beauty or uniqueness. The arrival of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 saw the creation of more trails throughout the park and two camps, one of which serves as the park headquarters today.

Not surprisingly, the park has been extremely popular,. In 2019, it had about 3.4 million visitors, which made it the country’s 7th most popular national park, trailing Great Smokey Mountain, (12.5 million annual visitors), Grand Canyon (6 million), Rocky Mountain (4.7 million), Zion and Yosemite (4.5 million), and Yellowstone (4 million).

I’ve had several wonderful trips to Acadia, most notably two trips to the AMC’s family camp on Echo Lake, where, among other things, we lay on the dock at night and watched shooting stars. I also have good memories of a bike trip in the early 80s when a friend and I took the ferry to Isle au Haut before riding (and walking) our non-mountain bikes over dirt roads and trails that took us to a magical campsite. I hope to get back there after all this craziness passes.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.