When a handful of conservationists gathered in Maine in September 1901, there was no guarantee that Mount Desert Island’s granite peaks, rocky coastline, and forests would escape the wave of private development spreading across America’s scenic landscapes. Rather than waiting for the federal government to intervene, local residents, summer visitors, and philanthropists created the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, a private conservation organization with a single goal: to buy and protect the island’s most treasured land before it disappeared. Over the next 15 years, the trustees assembled roughly 6,000 acres, creating the nucleus of what would become Acadia National Park, one of the first national parks established east of the Mississippi River. According to the National Park Service , those early land purchases ultimately led to the creation of Sieur de Monts National Monument in 1916, Lafayette National Park in 1919, and, after a congressional name change in 1929, the park now known as Acadia.
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