The first summer visitors who came Down East to Mount Desert Island beginning in the 1840s, because of their appreciation for a vacationing ‘rustic’ lifestyle, became known as the Rusticators. They were attracted to the island because they had seen paintings of the area exhibited by artists of the ‘Hudson River school’ like Thomas Cole, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Frederic Church.

Despite the relatively primitive living conditions on the island (as well as a diet consisting almost entirely of fish), the rusticators enjoyed both the spectacular scenery and the brisk sea air, a welcome change from the stifling summer heat of their cities: Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

Header Photo: Courtesy of Acadia National Park