The Pulpits of Acadia

This is not about church pulpits, but about prominent rock formations on Mount Desert Island, ME and in Acadia National Park that resemble them, were so named, and became hiking highlights.

Collections of Jesup Memorial Library

Pulpit Rock - Bar Harbor ca.1915

Pulpit Rock - Bar Harbor today

The earliest rock formation to be called Pulpit Rock appears to have been the one in Bar Harbor.

It was noted in 1869 by Benjamin F. De Costa. In his book, Sketches of the Coast of Maine, he mentions a shore walk from the steamboat landing [Bar Harbor wharf] south to Cromwells Cove: "Opposite Mr. Hardy's handsome cottage is an isolated rock. Every one must climb this, because, forsooth, it is Pulpit Rock. In some great cathedral, it would serve a good turn for the preacher.*1

It wasn't until 18 years later this pulpit rock became first depicted on a map.*2  It is located off the Shore Path alongside the Bar Harbor Inn.


Pulpit Rock - Gorge Path

The second pulpit rock initially appeared on 1896 path and MDI maps and was located in the gorge between Cadillac and Dorr Mountains.*3 

That same year a newspaper article describing the Cadillac Mountain path system stated, "The main path runs along the valley for a considerable distance, then crosses the [Kebo] brook and finally reaches the gorge and runs in the bed of the brook up between Green [Cadillac] and Dry [Dorr] mountains. Near the head of the brook one reaches Pulpit rock which affords a good resting place and charming vistas; then on up the gorge and at the top the path branches to east up Dry mountain, and west up Green to the Mountain house [a summit hotel]."*4

Francklyn Memorial - Gorge Path

Four-tenths mile before reaching this pulpit rock while hiking up the Gorge Path, the hiker will pass a bronze memorial to Lilian Endicott Francklyn (1891-1928), whose friends financially endowed the path in 1929.*5

 

 

The Pulpit - Maple Spring Trail

A 1906 path map depicted a third rock called "The Pulpit."*6  It is located in the Maple Spring Trail gorge 450' north of the carriage road's Hemlock Bridge.

A trail was named for it and called variously the Pulpit Trail, Pulpit Rock Trail, and Pulpit Rock-Maple Spring Trail. None of those appellations remains today.

The first time all three pulpit rocks appeared on the same map was in 1937.*7  Their last appearance on a map was in 1941.*8


SWHPL Collection of Photographs #8937

Pulpit Rock - Thunder Hole  1921

Apparently never mapped, there are two additional pulpit rocks.

The Southwest Harbor Public Library (SWHPL) has a 1921 photograph of "Pulpit Rock" at Thunder Hole off Ocean Drive.
This one is mentioned in a 1960 newspaper article: "As the flying spray obliterated vision of much of the pulpit rock at the side of Thunder Hole …"*9




Pulpit Rock - Thunder Hole today




SWHPL Collection of Photographs #11895

Pulpit Rock - Cadillac Mountain summit  1935

Another SWHPL photograph, of October 1935, identifies a pulpit rock overlooking Bar Harbor and the Porcupine Islands from the summit of Cadillac Mountain.

Why have these five pulpit rocks since disappeared from our awareness? Are there more pulpit rocks on MDI? Until we get the answers, have fun finding and enjoying them. Here are their GPS locations:

Bar Harbor Shore Path:           N44° 23.444'  W068° 12.083'            
Cadillac-Dorr Gorge Trail:       N44° 21.556'  W068° 13.211'
Maple Spring Trail gorge:        N44° 19.993'  W068° 16.876'
Thunder Hole:                         N44° 19.237'  W068° 11.318'
Cadillac summit:                      N44° 21.216'  W068° 13.306'

Pulpit Rock locations

Legend:   Trails     Park Loop Road     Carriage Road

 Footnotes:

1 Sketches of the Coast of Maine and Isles of Shoals, with Historical Notes, by B. F. De Costa. New York. 1869, pp. 130-131.
2 Map of Mount Desert Island. Colby & Stuart. 1887.
3 Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association Path Map of the Eastern Part of Mount Desert Island. Bates, Rand and Jaques. 1896. Map of Mount Desert Island. Bates, Rand and Jaques. 1896.
4 Bar Harbor Record. July 1, 1896, p. 5.
5 Francklyn memorial location: N44° 21.904'  W068° 13.254'  The Park had removed the memorial for maintenance by November 2012 and plans to reinstall it later this summer.
6 Path Map of the Eastern Part of Mount Desert Island. Bates, Rand and Jaques. 1906.
7 Map of the Eastern Part of Mount Desert Island. Bates, Rand and Jaques. Revised 1937.
8 Path and Road Map of the Eastern Part of Mount Desert Island. Bates, Rand and Jaques. Revised and published by William Jay Turner. 1941.
9 Bar Harbor Times. September 15, 1960, p. 1.

 

400th Anniversary of Mount Desert Island's First European Settlement and Introduction to Christianity

A bronze memorial outside St. Ignatius Church in Northeast Harbor, ME summarizes an event whose 400th anniversary on Mount Desert Island occurs this summer.*1  It states:

FIRST RECORDED LANDING OF WHITE PERSONS ON MT. DESERT ISLAND, MAINE 1613

FRENCH EXPEDITION, UNDER SIEUR DE LA SAUSSAYE, INCLUDING THREE JESUIT PRIESTS, FATHERS PIERRE BIARD, ENNAMOND MASSA, JACQUES QUENTIN AND JESUIT BROTHER GILBERT DU THET, LANDED ON WEST SIDE OF SOMES SOUND AT WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS FERNALD’S POINT. THEY NAMED THEIR SETTLEMENT SAINT SAUVEUR. SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, A BRITISH FORCE ATTACKED THE COLONY, KILLED BROTHER DU THET AND DISPERSED THE COLONY. BROTHER DU THET’S BODY IS BURIED SOMEWHERE ON THE SHORE OF WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS THE JESUIT MEADOW.

This event and its location have been recorded by many historians, among them Francis Parkman, William Otis Sawtelle, Samuel Eliot Morison and David Hackett Fischer. My intent here is to verify the location of the Saint Sauveur settlement on Fernald Point based on Father Biard's own description.*2

With regard to their landing on MDI after departing Port Royal, Nova Scotia, some 150 miles eastward, Biard records, "… by morning the fog had all disappeared. We recognized that we were opposite Mount desert, an Island, which the Savages call Pemetiq. The pilot turned to the Eastern shore of the Island, and there located us in a large and beautiful port,…"

Indians arrived and told Biard, "'It is necessary that thou comest, since Asticou, our Sagamore, is sick unto death; and if thou dost not come he will die without baptism, and will not go to heaven. Thou wilt be the cause of it, for he himself wishes very much to be baptized.' This argument, so naively deduced, astonished Father Biard, and fully persuaded him to go there, especially as it was only three leagues away, and in all there would result no greater loss of time than one afternoon; so he got into one of their canoes with Sieur de La Mote, lieutenant, and Simon the interpreter, and went off."

Biard met with Asticou, who was not dying but suffering from a cold, at his summer camp on Manchester Point, in Northeast Harbor, opposite Fernald Point. The Indians convinced Biard to settle nearby.

Biard's description of the settlement site: "This place is a beautiful hill, rising gently from the sea, its sides bathed by two springs; the land is cleared for twenty or twenty-five acres, and in some places is covered with grass almost as high as a man. It faces the South and East ..."

Saint Sauveur/Fernald Point from Flying Mountain

Regarding the two springs: In his autobiography, Boston Congregational minister and Fernald Point Road summer resident Charles Dole commented, "… where now the 'rusticators' come in troops to see splendid sunsets, and to look over the 'Jesuits' Field' on the old Fernald farm, with its springs of ice-cold water under the shore, each submerged twice a day with the salt tides and presently pure as crystal again."*3  Rev. Ephraim Cummings stated "… and as I recollect how they [Professor C.H. Fernald and his son Professor H.T. Fernald] walked with us [on August 3, 1893] over Flying Mountain, pointed out the two springs, …"*4  Clara Barnes Martin contributed, "… There is a spring at high-water mark on each side of the Point, …"*5 Benjamin DeCosta added, "…While at the farm-house, we inquired if there were any springs of water on the Point, as Biard says that it 'was supplied with water by a spring on each side.' The query was promptly answered by Mr. Fernald, who led us to a spring on the east side, and one also on the west. That on the east side ran into the sound. Its outlet has been greatly disturbed by the wearing away of the shore, yet we found the water still running. That on the west side of the Point overflows into a little cove, boiling up out of the sand with considerable force. At high tide the salt water flows into it, yet when the tide recedes the spring is found as pure and fresh as before. …"*6



West spring or "Jesuit Spring"

 

 

 

 

 

The west side spring is well known and has been marked on maps as "Jesuit Spring" from at least 1896. It still flows strongly into Fernald Cove.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

East spring

 

 

 

The east side spring has not been marked on maps and its flow is weak into Somes Sound, just as DeCosta described in 1869.

 

Both springs are below the high tide line.

 

Their locations are noted on the attached aerial photograph.*7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As to the acreage: Biard described the land as being 20 or 25 acres. Using GPS software and U.S. Geological Survey aerial photography I measured Fernald Point along its current shore and tree lines. It encompasses 25 acres.

Aerial view of Saint Sauveur or "Jesuit Field" now Fernald Point

While the exact location of Biard's landing on MDI is not known, his many references to league distances while he was in the Port Royal/Bay of Fundy area equate a league to about three miles. Back plotting three leagues or nine miles from Asticou's summer camp at Manchester Point indicates Biard's ship landed at or near Sand Beach in Newport Cove on MDI's eastern shore.

The English ship Treasurer, sailing from Virginia and under the command of Samuel Argall, destroyed the settlement within a few months of its establishment. This event effectively started an English-French war of colonization that would last 150 years.

No known artifacts of the settlement have been found, nor is it known if any attempt has ever been made to recover them. Yet Biard states that the three individuals killed in Argall's attack, including Brother du Thet, were buried there. On a return visit to completely destroy the settlement, Argall executed one of his own men. Perhaps then there was a fourth body buried on Fernald Point. The question begs, Would a serious archaeological search to locate their remains, and any other remains of the settlement, still be feasible?

Footnotes:

1 GPS location of memorial: N44° 17.643'  W068° 17.619'  For this memorial's information see my blog post of September 27, 2012 titled J.J. O'Brien and His Jesuit Settlement Memorial.

2 The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents - Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791, multiple volumes ed. by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published from1896.

3 My Eighty Years by Charles F. Dole. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. 1927, p.290.

4 Father Biard's Relation of 1616 and Saint Sauveur by Rev. E.C. Cummings. Read before the Maine Historical Society, December 7, 1893.

5 Mount Desert on the Coast of Maine by Clara Barnes Martin, 4th ed. 1877, p.50.

6 Sketches of the Coast of Maine and the Isle of Shoals by B. F. De Costa. 1869, p.49.

7 GPS location of springs:

West spring: N44° 17.858'  W068° 18.809'
East spring: N44° 18.049'  W068° 18.641'

Hiking the Trails of Acadia NP's Schoodic Peninsula

ANP's Schoodic Peninsula trails

In early May my wife and I visited the Schoodic Peninsula to hike up Schoodic Head, a 440-foot high coastal mountain. This is an area of Acadia National Park across Frenchman Bay that is off the beaten track for Park visitors to Mount Desert Island, as it is about a 48-mile, 75-minute drive from Bar Harbor, ME.

Three trails lead to Schoodic Head. We did a 2-mile loop hike from the Blueberry Hill parking lot, which is on the one-way road bearing left away from the Schoodic Education and Research Center and the Schoodic Point parking lot. We walked the level Alder Trail for 3/4 mile before turning right at the Schoodic Head trail post to start the ascent. Along the way we passed an active beaver habitat and enjoyed seeing Black and White, Yellow-rumped and Blackburnian Warblers.

The heavily wooded 0.70-mile ascent to Schoodic Head has intriguing rock formations, bogwalks and stone and logcrib steps.





Schoodic Head summit station benchmark

The summit is marked by a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey triangulation station benchmark stamped Schoodic 1860.*1

Our 1.25-mile descent to the main road via the Anvil Trail involved a stop at an overlook that provided a beautiful view of MDI's mountains. Upon reaching the road we found the parking lot just 500 feet to the right. Both the ascent and descent trails are moderate in difficulty, but extra caution is advised when they are wet. We did not hike the East Trail off the summit, but that will happen on the next visit.

Acadia NP's 2,000 acres on the Schoodic Peninsula were donated in 1927 by heirs of John Godfrey Moore, a Mainer from nearby Steuben who made his fortune in NYC from his lumber, telegraph and financial businesses. Moore earlier had established the Grindstone Neck community in Winter Harbor as an optional wealthy enclave to those on MDI. His cottage, which he named Far from the Wolf, a reference to Wall Street, is still there. Moore's bronze memorial plaque is attached to a rock in the Schoodic Point parking lot.*2


Moore memorial plaque

A few years after the Moore donation an interesting June 1931comment appeared in a National Geodetic Survey datasheet about the Schoodic Head station benchmark: "The station is in the Acadia National Park, on what was until recently known as Schoodic Mountain, but which is now called Schoodic Head by the park authorities, probably to distinguish it from another Schoodic Mountain some 16 miles to the n[orth]."

Hikers might want to visit the above-mentioned SERC, Acadia NP's research learning center. It occupies a former U.S. Navy base that had its origin on MDI's Otter Cliff peninsula where the Fabbri Picnic Area is now located. The site was the innovation of New Yorker and Bar Harbor summer resident Alessandro Fabbri, who established it in 1917 during WW I. He subsequently offered it to the War Department after realizing the site's communications operators could listen to enemy radio communications in Europe. In the early 1930s John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who was building the Park Loop Road, proposed to finance the Navy's relocation of the site to the Schoodic Peninsula, on property obtained from the Moore donation. The Navy agreed and in 1935 commissioned the new base there. The French Romanesque building just beyond the SERC entrance was the former base headquarters. It resembles the two gatehouses JDR, Jr., built for his MDI carriage roads. The Navy decommissioned the base in 2002 and returned the property to the Park. Fabbri's bronze memorial plaque is in a traffic island opposite the Park Loop Road entrance to the Fabbri Picnic Area.*3

Fabbri memorial plaque

 

Footnotes:
1 Schoodic Head benchmark GPS location: N44° 21.046'  W068° 03.217'
2 Moore memorial GPS location: N44° 21.046'  W068° 03.217'
3 Fabbri memorial GPS location: N44° 18.853'  W068° 11.799'

Start of FOA/Acadia NP's 2013 Volunteer Season

This Tuesday a group of volunteers raked drainage ditches, cleaned culverts and removed forest litter from the Kebo Brook Trail in Acadia National Park. This was the first day out for the volunteers this year and there will be many more days until the volunteer season ends with the arrival of next winter's snow.

The volunteers are under the aegis of Friends of Acadia, an independent nonprofit located in Bar Harbor, ME, with work projects selected by Acadia National Park. They meet at the flagpole outside Park Hq off Route 233 at 8:15 Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, depart for their assignments at 8:30 in Park-provided and equipped vans and return by noon. The work varies from easy to difficult, non-technical to technical and can accommodate physically fit youth to seniors. Contact FOA for additional information and other ways to volunteer (http://friendsofacadia.org/).




Work break


















Finished and smiling

Tuesday's task had the volunteers working on one of the Park's newest trails. The Kebo Brook Trail, a gently rising 1-mile trail, starts at Kebo Street beside Holy Redeemer Cemetery and ends near the Park Loop Road bridge over Route 233.*1

It parallels then crosses Kebo Brook, which originates in The Gorge between Dorr and Cadillac Mountains, and runs along the base of Kebo and Cadillac Mountains. Completed in 2012 by the Park's trails crew and FOA volunteers, it sets up access to several loop hikes by use of the Strath Eden Path, the Kebo Mountain Path, the Gorge Path, and the Cadillac North Ridge Trail.*2



Kebo Brook Trail (purple)

Strath Eden Path stone at trail junction

A nice feature of the Kebo Brook Trail is its easy accessibility from downtown Bar Harbor via the Great Meadow Loop Trail. It is a pleasant1-mile walk from the village green to the trailhead on Kebo Street.*3  Plans are in the offing for transportation this summer to the Park Loop Road end of the trail by the Island Explorer, a free shuttle bus service.

This FOA/ANP volunteer effort is fun and social and a unique way to get into the heart of one of America's best hiking and most beautiful national parks and contribute to its care and well-being. The physical exercise and exertion are also welcome personal benefits.

Footnotes:

1 Kebo Brook Trail GPS coordinates:

Kebo Street: N44° 22.555'  W068° 12.827'
Park Loop Road: N44° 22.773'  W068° 13.930'

2 Strath Eden Path - an engraved stone identifying this path is at its junction with both the Hemlock Trail and the Hemlock Road near Sieur de Monts. GPS location:
N44° 21.997'  W068° 12.765'

3 See blog post "A Memorial Walk: Bar Harbor to Sieur de Monts," dated June 24, 2012.

The Satterlee Window

During my research of J.P. Morgan's 1910 purchase of Great Head and Sand Beach on Mount Desert Island, ME for his daughter Louisa Morgan Satterlee, I learned there was a Tiffany stained glass window depicting Great Head above the altar of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Innocents .*1


Church of the Holy Innocents

Holy Innocents is located in Highland Falls, NY. Church construction started in 1842. Robert Walter Weir, an artist of the Hudson River School and a 42-year professor of art at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, provided the design and financing.*2

Among its parishioners were the Morgan, Satterlee and Tracy families. [Recap: J.P. Morgan married Frances Tracy; their daughter Louisa married Herbert Satterlee.] Morgan had bought a nearby summer home, "Cragston," overlooking the Hudson River, in 1871. He served the church as a vestryman and warden and provided financial support, including the building of a new rectory in 1897.

Window in Chancel

The Louis Comfort Tiffany-signed window, entitled "Creation," was installed in the church's chancel in 1922. It was the gift of Louisa in memory of her father. It states the opening to the Benedicite hymn of praise: "O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever." It depicts massive Great Head and the sun rising above the ocean's horizon.

Closeup of Window

After a request to President Roosevelt by Interior Secretary Ickes to promote the national parks during National Parks Year, the U.S. Government issued a 7-cent "Acadia" stamp in October 1934. It featured the Great Head promontory and mirrored Holy Innocents' window.

The scene from which the stamp was produced was taken from a coastal ledge just west of Great Head, as shown in the March 2013 photograph below.*3

Great Head

Louisa and Herbert Satterlee's daughter, Eleanor, donated the Great Head and Sand Beach estate to Acadia National Park in 1949. A memorial, attesting to this, is at the top of the parking lot steps to Sand Beach.*4

Postscript: Tiffany stained glass windows can be seen on Mount Desert Island in Bar Harbor's St. Saviour's Church (10 windows) and Hulls Cove's Church of Our Father (1 window).

*Footnotes:

1 Regarding the Morgan purchase, see my February 5, 2013 blog post "Great Head, Sand Beach and J. P. Morgan."

2 It was artists from the Hudson River School, like Frederic Church and Thomas Cole, whose landscapes of Mount Desert Island in the mid 1800s inspired influential people to visit, reside and ultimately establish Acadia National Park.

3 GPS location from which the Great Head scene was taken: N44° 19.616'  W068° 10.514'

4 GPS location of memorial at Sand Beach steps: N44° 19.765'  W068° 11.028'

 

Stephen Mather - Further Memorial Locations

In my Stephen Mather post of July 29, 2012 I said, "It is my goal to find the Mather memorials in the national parks I visit and pause to remember the 'Father' of the U.S. National Park Service and appreciate the good that he has done for us. Perhaps you will now also engage in this interesting quest."

On a just completed vacation from a Maine winter to a Georgia spring I looked for two Mather bronze-plaque memorials, one in Virginia and the other in New York. Before finding them, I stopped in Darien, CT to see the 1778 Mather Homestead, a national historic landmark, at 19 Stephen Mather Road. Nearby is the Mather Cemetery, where Stephen is buried.*1

Mather Homestead

The first memorial I located was in VA at the Petersburg National Battlefield, the Civil War site of the 9 1/2-month Union siege that led to Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The memorial lies horizontally on a brick stand near the visitor center.*2

Mather Memorial - Petersburg National Battlefield

The second I found with some difficulty at an unexpected location. It was inside NY's Bear Mountain Zoo and affixed to a large boulder on a high prominence overlooking the Hudson River just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge.*3 The bridge, when it opened in 1924, was the world's longest suspension bridge.

Mather Memorial - Bear Mountain

This location raises a question, as the memorial is inside the 5,000-acre Bear Mountain State Park. Recall that Mather was the first director of the federal government's National Park Service. Following his death in 1930, his memorial plaque was placed in most national parks and likely in entities under NPS jurisdiction. I was unaware of a Mather memorial in a state park. Its location might be due to the underlying ground of the mostly demolished Revolutionary War's Fort Clinton or perhaps to President Roosevelt's program to preserve public lands during the 1930s Great Depression via the Works Progress Administration, which was engaged in the park at the time.

I have not come across a complete list of the Mather memorial locations. I hope you join me in this interesting and educational quest to fill in that list. If you do find one, please let me know.

* GPS locations:

1 Mather home - Darien: N41° 06.768'  W073° 28.468'
2 Mather memorial - Petersburg NB: N37° 14.627'  W077° 21.396'
3 Mather memorial - Bear Mountain SP: N41° 19.059'  W073° 59.278'