105 I e Michigan Dairy - Wtu . - Thursday, November 2, 1995

Acadia National Park is tucked away on a
small island just off the coast of central
Maine. It is the smallest of all our
national parks, but ranks behind only
Yellowstone in the number of people who
visit each year. In the 1920's,this
magnificent area was a social mecca for
the rich. Mansions lined the Bar Harbor
waters so families of Ford, Goodyear,
Pulitzer, and Rockefeller could find time
to relax. All that changed with the great
fire of 1927; the fire stretched nearly 300
miles down Maine's coast, destroying
everything in its path, including over 40
mansions in the Bar Harbor area. The
idea of Maine being a social capital was
over. The rich went elsewhere, leaving
their homes to ruin. John D. Rockefeller
changed all that. Realizing that this
beautiful land should be preserved, he
succeeded in persuading his neighbors to
donate their land back to the government
for institution of our youngest national
park. Rockefeller took this project very
seriously - he wanted nature as the
primary focus. He supervised
construction of over 100 trails and
bridges throughout Acadia and in his
words "... are only to be used by horse-
drawn carriages and hikers, no
mechanized vehicles." Of course, that
principle has changed since then, but the


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