Saving Schoodic: A Story of Development, Lost Settlement, and Preservation

Abstract

Remote, isolated, and nearly barren Schoodic Point, now the easternmost part of Acadia National Park, was long bypassed by early explorers and settlers. It might have seemed destined to remain deserted, a candidate for coastal parkland preservation in the twentieth century. But like such distant outposts as Vinalhaven, Swan’s, and Ironbound islands, Schoodic in the nineteenth century was overtaken by extensive land development, logging, and settlement by ?shermen farmers. Eventually its proximity to Bar Harbor made it a target for vacation resort cottages. Yet Schoodic’s peninsular ecology and elements of its social circumstances helped it escape such development in favor of land preservation and tourism. Allen Workman, a retired college textbook editor, has summered next to Schoodic Point since 1946. He is a member of the Historical Societies of Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro.