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Bar Harbor, Maine
- A history
(Click here to Search Bar Harbor Maine
Real Estate)
Historians are
able to trace the origins of Bar Harbor back to the late
1500’s and early 1600’s with the presence of Abanaki Native
Americans. French explorer Samuel de Champlain is believed
to be the first white man to set foot at Bar Harbor. He
dubbed the island “Isles des Monts Deserts” which translates
to “Island of the Barren Mountains.”
The town was first settled in 1763 and incorporated 33 years
later under the name Eden, after Sir Richard Eden, an
English statesman. While almost all resident made their
livings in fishing, lumbering, shipbuilding and agriculture
over the next 100 years, the arrival of artists in the mid
1800s would signify a fundamental change in the economy that
is still seen today.
Journalists, sportsmen and society types were all drawn to
the Bar Harbor they saw in paintings from the likes of
Frederick Church and Thomas Cole. By 1855, the first hotel
in Eden, Agamont House, was built. Within 25 years there
were 30 hotels in or around Bar Harbor and it became an
alternative to Newport, Rhode Island, as a vacation spot for
the rich and famous.
Quickly, such luxurious amenities such as yachting, garden
parties and carriage rides were commonplace, as was enjoying
a day at the track or on the golf course, rare diversions in
the late 1800s and early 1900s. Eden became known as the
place in Maine where the wealthy “from away” would come to
play during summer months.
Eden was rechristened Bar Harbor in 1918, after Bar Island,
which protects the harbor on Frenchmen’s Bay.
A fire raged for almost two weeks across the island in 1947
destroying five grand hotels and over 65 homes of the rich.
The fire spared the town’s business district. While Bar
Harbor and Mt. Desert Island remained a favorite spot for
the well-to-do after the fire, it never regained the elite
status it held with America’s richest following the fire.
(Read more about the
history of Bar Harbor)
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