The area we now call Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island is the ancestral

land of the Penobscot Nation and Passamakwati tribe.

The Wabenaki people have inhabited the area for more than 10,000 years,

long before it was a national park and popular destination for tourists and down east Maine.

Millions of people flock to Acadia National Park every year.

Visitors pour into the gorgeous landscape that truly has it all.

From its 26 mountain peaks to deep water ponds,

the rocky main coastline and thick pine forests,

and that salty down east air that could never be captured by a Yankee

candle scent. Many well-known names have claimed a piece of Mount Desert

Island as home at one point or another. Among them, Rockefeller's,

Carnegie's, Vanderbilt's, and Morgans.

These wealthy summer residents built up their cottages

as they contributed to a massive tourism boom, telling tales of how beautiful Maine is this time of year,

and so their city-dwelling neighbors just had to come see Mount Desert Island for themselves.

But Acadia wasn't Acadia until 1929. That moniker was given just as the Great Depression arrived. The once wealthy people

from away retreated from their down east escapes back to the cities from once they came.

Tragedy struck Mount Desert Island and the National Parkland in 1947. Fire raged through the dry autumn forests,

destroying 10,000 acres of Acadia, as well as nearly 70 estates, several historic hotels, and 170 homes in Bar Harbor.

Can you imagine what Bar Harbor and MDI would look like today, with every one of those early 1900 structures still standing.

Think of how the landscape of the park would look if those trees lost in the fire were given the last 70 years to spread their roots.

The loss was devastating, but nature has done as it does, and it started new again. According to author Randy Muntor,

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