Across Frenchman Bay to the east of Bar Harbor, Schoodic Peninsula sticks out into the Gulf of Maine south of Maine Route 186. Only a few miles from Bar Harbor by water, it’s about 45 miles by car, and only about 10% of the visitors to Acadia National Park ever make it to this remote area (2,266 acres) on the mainland.
A six-mile one-way road, beginning just past Mosquito Harbor, loops around the granite headlands past marshes, tide pools, mudflats, and pine and spruce forests, leading out to the dramatic panoramic views of the sea available from Schoodic Point and the top of Schoodic Head, 440 feet up.
The entire peninsula, once upon a time, was owned by John Godfrey Moore, one of those now forgotten late 19th-century millionaires who, during the year, ran the banks, the railroads, the oil industry, etc., and in the summers came Down East. (In Moore’s case, his company provided infrastructure for a growing firm called Western Union.) After the industrialist’s death, George B. Dorr acquired the peninsula for his new national park from Moore’s Anglophile widow, who insisted that she could never donate their property to anything named for Lafayette. Fine, Dorr told her, we’ll change the name to Acadia.
The U.S. Navy radio station that once stood on the site of today’s Fabbri Memorialwas moved here in 1935. In 2002, the base was transferred to the national park, and now serves as an environmental education and research center.
