The Book of the National Parks

by Robert Sterling Yard

SEA CAVES IN THE GRANITE
Thus does the ocean everlastingly undermine the foundations of the mountains. Photograph taken at low tide; Lafayette National Park

The feature which especially distinguishes Mount Desert Island from other islands, in fact from the entire Atlantic coast, is a group of granitic mountains which rise abruptly from the sea. They were once towering monsters, perhaps only one, unquestionably the loftiest for many miles around. They are the sole remainders upon the present coast line of a great former range. They are composed almost wholly of granite, worn down by the ages, but massive enough still to resist the agencies which wiped away their comrades. They rise a thousand feet or more, grim, rounded, cleft with winding valleys and deep passes, divided in places by estuaries of the sea, holding in their hollows many charming lakes.

Their abrupt flanks gnawed by the beating sea, their valleys grown with splendid forests and brightened by wild flowers, their slopes and domes sprinkled with conifers which struggle for foothold in the cracks which the elements are widening and deepening in their granite surface, for years they have been the resort of thousands of climbers, students of nature and seekers of the beautiful; the views of sea, estuary, island, plain, lake, and mountain from the heights have no counterpart elsewhere.

All this mountain wilderness, free as it was to the public, was in private ownership. Some of it was held by persons who had not seen it for years. Some of it was locked up in estates. The time came when owners began to plan fine summer homes high on the mountain slopes. A few, however, believed that the region should belong to the whole people, and out of this belief grew the movement, led by George B. Dorr and Charles W. Eliot, to acquire title and present it to the nation which would not buy it. They organized a holding association, to which they gave their own properties; for years afterward Mr. Dorr devoted most of his time to persuading others to contribute their holdings, and to raising subscriptions for the purchase of plots which were tied up in estates. In 1916 the association presented five thousand acres to the Government, and President Wilson created it by proclamation the Sieur de Monts National Monument. The gift has been greatly increased since. In 1918 Congress made appropriations for its upkeep and development. In February, 1919, Congress changed its name and status; it then became the Lafayette National Park.

The impulse to name the new national park after the French general who came to our aid in time of need arose, of course, out of the war-time warmth of feeling for our ally, France. The region had been identified with early French exploration; the original monument had been named in commemoration of this historical association. The first European settlement in America north of the latitude of the Gulf of Mexico was here. Henry of Navarre had sent two famous adventurers to the new world, de Monts and Champlain. The first colony established by de Monts was at the mouth of the St. Croix River, which forms the eastern boundary of Maine, and the first land within the present United States which was reached by Champlain was Mount Desert Island. This was in 1604. It was Champlain who gave the island its present name, after the mountains which rise so prominently from its rock-bound shore. To him, however, the name had a different significance than it first suggests to us. L'Isle des Monts Deserts meant to him the Island of the Lonely Mountains, and lonely indeed they must have seemed above the flat shore line. Thus named, the place became a landmark for future voyagers; among others Winthrop records seeing the mountains on his way to the Massachusetts colony in 1630. He anchored opposite and fished for two hours, catching "sixty-seven great cod," one of which was "a yard around."

"By a curious train of circumstances," writes George B. Dorr, "the titles by which these mountains to the eastward of Somes Sound are held go back to the early ownership of Mount Desert Island by the Crown of France. For it was granted by Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV, to Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, an officer of noble family from southwestern France, then serving in Acadia, who afterward became successively the founder of Detroit and Governor of Louisiana—the Mississippi Valley. Cadillac lost it later, through English occupation of the region, ownership passing, first to the Province, then to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But presently the Commonwealth gave back to his granddaughter—Madame de Gregoire—and her husband, French refugees, the Island's eastern half, moved thereto by the part that France had taken in the recent War of Independence and by letters they had brought from Lafayette. And they came down and lived there."

And so it naturally followed that, under stress of war enthusiasm, this reservation with its French associations should commemorate not only the old Province of Acadia, which the French yielded to England only after half a century of war, and England later on to us after another war, but the great war also in which France, England, and the United States all joined as allies in the cause of the world's freedom. In accord with this idea, the highest mountain looking upon the sea has been named the Flying Squadron, in honor of the service of the air, born of an American invention, and carried to perfection by the three allies in common.

The park may be entered from any of the surrounding resorts, but the main gateway is Bar Harbor, which is reached by train, automobile, and steamboat. No resort may be reached more comfortably, and hotel accommodations are ample.