Somes Sound
Near Bar Harbor, Maine
Cutting deep into the heart of Mount Desert Island is a long, narrow arm of the sea called Somes Sound. For generations it was described as the only true fjord on the entire east coast of the United States, a deep glacial inlet flanked by mountains. Today geologists tend to use a gentler word, fjard, for a glacially carved sea inlet that does not have the sheer, towering walls of the great fjords of Norway.
Whatever you call it, it is a striking sight, a blue channel plunging as much as one hundred and seventy five feet deep and running miles inland, with wooded hills rising steeply on either side. The sound takes its name from Abraham Somes, who was one of the first settlers on the island and made his home at the head of the inlet. The little village that grew there, Somesville, is called the first village on the island, and it survives today as one of the most picturesque spots in all of Maine, with a famous white arched footbridge over a mill pond.
The glaciers that carved this sound left behind one of the most distinctive coastlines on the Atlantic.
