The Wabanaki peoples, whose homeland this has always been, and the part of the park's history the old signs left out.
None of this was ever empty. The Maliseet, the Mi'kmaq, the Passamaquoddy and the Penobscot, together the Wabanaki, have lived here since time immemorial, at least twelve thousand years by the archaeology Geo Neptune cites. In the summer colony years they sold baskets to the tourists while being pushed off their land. By eighteen ninety-three their encampments were banned from the Bar Harbor shore. For most of the last century the federal government barred them from gathering sweetgrass in this park, and the work of bringing that back only began in twenty fifteen. The Park Service says it plainly now. The conservation legacy you're driving through grew from the forced displacement of native people from their homeland. They are still here. The Abbe Museum in downtown Bar Harbor is the place to hear it from them.
Photo: Edgar El, CC BY 3.0 · CC BY 3.0