Sieur de Monts, the Sweet Waters of Acadia
Near Bar Harbor, Maine
Near the junction of the Park Loop Road and the road to town lies a gentle, green place that George Dorr called the heart of Acadia. This is Sieur de Monts, named for the French nobleman who led the sixteen oh four expedition that first charted this coast. Here, in nineteen oh nine, Dorr found a natural spring bubbling up from the ground, and he built a graceful little octagonal spring house over it, in an Italian Renaissance style.
On the rock beside it he carved the words, The Sweet Waters of Acadia. To Dorr this was a symbol, the pure source from which his beloved park would flow. Around the spring today you will find several treasures.
There is a nature center that explains the story of the park. There are the Wild Gardens of Acadia, where volunteers tend more than three hundred species of native plants, each one arranged in the habitat where it naturally grows, from bog to meadow to mountain. And there is the original home of the Abbe Museum.
Walk the shaded paths here and you are standing at the quiet, living headwaters of the whole idea of Acadia, the place where one determined man decided that this landscape should belong to everyone, forever.
