Mount Desert Island
| Mount Desert Island | ||
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| Waters | Atlantic Ocean | |
| Geographical location | 44 ° 21 ′ N , 68 ° 17 ′ W | |
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| length | 24 km | |
| width | 13 km | |
| surface | 280 km² | |
| Highest elevation |
Cadillac Mountain 470 m |
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| Residents | 10,000 36 inhabitants / km² |
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| main place | Bar Harbor | |
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Mount Desert Island is the largest island off Penobscot Bay on the Maine coast in the northeastern United States . The total area is around 280 km², it is 24 km long, 13 km wide and is the second largest island off the east coast of the United States after Long Island . The French explorer Samuel de Champlain observed the barren vegetation of the mountains from the lake around 1604 and gave the island the name L'isle des Monts Déserts ("island of bare mountains").
The island has a permanent population of around 10,000 residents. Large areas of Mount Desert Island are covered by Acadia National Park , which about two and a half million tourists visit annually. The island is dominated by Cadillac Mountain , the summit of which is 470 m above sea level and from which one has a spectacular view of the national park and the surrounding islands. The summit of Cadillac Mountain is believed to be the point in the United States that the rays of the rising sun first hit.
The largest and best-known city on the island is Bar Harbor with around 5200 inhabitants, a holiday and seaside resort known as Summer Colony in the USA . This mainly refers to places by the sea in which members of the so-called upper class live or go on vacation.
In the last ice age , Mount Desert Island was covered by a layer of ice up to three kilometers thick. After the ice melted, rounded mountains, elongated lakes, countless rocks and the approximately 9 km long and 40 m deep Somes Sound , the only fjord on the east coast of the United States, became visible .
history
As early as 6000 years ago, Indians lived here, as has been shown by scientific studies of the clamshell collections. After Sebastiano Caboto visited the Maine coast in 1497, European fishing boats came regularly to the North American east coast. The next known explorer was Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 . From the first written reports it appears that the Indians living there, the Penobscot , called the island Pemetic (sloping land). They built round, bark-covered huts and traveled in birch bark canoes, spent the summers by the sea and the winters in the forest-covered, sheltered interior of the island.
It is not known when the island's natives first came into contact with Europeans. The first reports come from Samuel de Champlain, whose expedition reached Mount Desert Island on September 5, 1604. He wrote in his journal The mountains are all bare and rocky ... I call them "L'isles des Monts Désert." In 1613, French Jesuits established their first mission in North America near what is now Fernald Point at the entrance to Somes Sound . The mission and an accompanying fort were destroyed shortly afterwards by the British Captain Samuel Argall from Virginia .
After the British invasion, the Jesuits left Mount Desert Island, which was on the border of the territories claimed by France and England. To the north and east was the French colony of Akadien in New France , to the south the British colonies in New England . In the next 150 years this area was fiercely fought over in numerous wars and no Europeans lived on the island, which served as a landmark for seafarers.
For a short time it seemed as if Mount Desert Island would be populated by the French. In 1688 Antoine Laumet was granted about 400 km² of land on the coast including the entire island. Laumet, who had given himself the title Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac , wanted to establish a feudal state there. Although Cadillac lived with his bride for a while on the island, the project soon failed. The highest mountain on the island bears his name, Mount Cadillac.
In 1759, with the capture of Québec , the British troops ended French rule in North America and the land on the Maine coast and the offshore islands were opened for settlement. Governor Francis Bernard of Massachusetts received a royal land grant on Mount Desert Island for his services. Around 1760, Bernard tried to secure his land holdings by offering free land to settlers. Abraham Somes and James Richardson accepted the offer and settled in what is now Somesville. The start of the American Revolutionary War made Bernard's plans for Mount Desert Island fail because he lost his property because he was on the British side. The western half of the island was given to John Bernard, son of the governor, who, unlike his father, was on the side of the Americans, from Massachusetts. Marie Therese de Gregoire, Cadillac's granddaughter, got the eastern half. The new owners soon sold their land to large landowners who did not live on the island.
When Maine separated from Massachusetts and became a separate state around 1820, agriculture, logging, fishing and shipbuilding were the main sources of income on Mount Desert Island. The island was popularized by artists and journalists in the mid-19th century. Hudson River School painters, such as Thomas Cole and Frederic Church, glorified and popularized the island with their paintings and inspired patrons and followers to live here. Around 1880 there were around 30 hotels competing for tourists, making tourism the most important source of income on the island.
Mount Desert Island, relatively remote from the big cities of the east coast, became an insider tip and a retreat for prominent wealthy Americans of the 1880s. The Rockefellers , Morgans , Fords , Vanderbilts , Carnegies and Astors spent their summers here. These families lived in elegant, lavishly furnished houses, which, in understatement, were called cottages, and which changed the image of the island. Some of them founded a Village Improvement Society, which created and maintained hiking trails and via ferratas in the mountains. For more than 40 years island life was shaped by the rich, and it wasn't until the Great Depression in 1929 and World War II that the extravaganzas ended . The complete end of this era came when a devastating forest fire destroyed part of the property in 1947.
In 1901 George B. Dorr and others founded the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations out of concern for the preservation of the landscape . This society had the goal of protecting parts of the island permanently for the public and acquired 24 km² of land for this purpose. Dorr offered this land to the federal government, and in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson announced the establishment of the Sieur de Monts National Monument. Dorr acquired further areas and campaigned for national park status. In 1919, Wilson signed a bill to establish Lafayette National Park , then the first national park east of the Mississippi . Rockefeller donated more land to expand the reserve, which was renamed Acadia National Park in 1929 and is now visited by around 2.5 million tourists annually (2003).
Remarks
The Far Harbor-Dlc of the computer game Fallout 4 takes place on a fictional island, which is modeled after the real Mount Desert Island . There are also striking places such as Far Harbor (based on Bar Harbor) and Acadia National Park.
Web links
- National Park Service: Acadia National Park (English)
- Mount Desert Island (English)
- Mount Desert Historical Society (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Britannica Online
- ^ Acadia National Park
- ↑ Jay Itzkowitz (Ed.): APA-Guides New England , page 264ff. RV Reise- und Verkehrsverlag GmbH, Munich 1991. ISBN 3-575-21415-8
- ↑ Mount Desert Island