Acadia Natioanal Park gets its name from a place near and dear to me and my family; Acadia. The park is incredibly beautiful, and a short drive from Boston. Cadillac Mountain is also the tallest mountain on the Atlantic Coast.
Acadia National Park is mostly located on Mount Desert Island, where you will visit the Hulls Cove Visitor Center or the Thompson Island Visitor Center. Other park areas are located on Schoodic Peninsula and Isle au Haut.
One of the highlights of a visit to this park is climbing or driving up Cadillac Mountain. Mount Desert Island has many lakes, ponds and harbors, but then the pink granite mountains climb through a spruce-fir, aspen, pine, birch, and oak forest to the summit at 1,530 feet. A fire in 1947 burned 10,000 acres of spruce-fir, replacing it with birch, aspen, and oak.
Samuel Champlain discovered the Island in 1604, calling it Isle des Monts Deserts (French for Island of Barren Mountains). Bar Harbor, the biggest town on the island, is also a big attraction. The granite was exposed by glacial activity generations ago.
The park was designated in 1919; the first east of the Mississippi River after it was the Sieur de Monts National Monument from 1916 to 1919.
