Today in History: February 26
The mountain summits are all bare and rocky…I name it Isles des Monts Desert.Journal of Samuel Champlain, September 5, 1604.
Surf at Great Head, Mt. Desert Island, Maine, circa 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
Congress approved An Act to Establish the Lafayette National Park at Mt. Desert Island on the coast of Maine on February 26, 1919. The park, expanded and renamed Acadia National Park in 1929, was the first national park east of the Mississippi.
Claimed for a time by both France and England, Mt. Desert Island was the site of the first French mission in America, established by Jesuits in 1613. French explorer Samuel Champlain had visited the island in 1604, 16 years before the Pilgrims established a settlement at Plymouth. The British secured their claim to the island with their victory over the French at Quebec in 1759.
By the nineteenth century, farming, lumbering, fishing, and shipbuilding had developed into thriving industries on the island. In the mid-1800s, painters and journalists shared the scenic beauty of the island with outsiders, triggering a flood of well-heeled summer tourists, many of whom built lavish homes there in the 1880s and 1890s.
Along the Shore Path, Mt. Desert Island, Maine, circa 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
George B. Dorr, himself a member of this wealthy vacationing class, led the effort, begun in 1901, to conserve the landscape of Acadia. The Sieur de Monts National Monument was created by presidential proclamation in 1916 with 6,000 acres of land purchased and donated by Dorr and other private citizens intent upon preserving the region from lumbering and development interests. When the monument was designated a national park in 1919, Dorr became its first superintendent.
The Grand Canyon
Also on this date, February 26, 1919, Congress passed An Act to Establish the Grand Canyon National Park in the State of Arizona. Comprising over one million acres of northwestern Arizona, the park includes the most spectacular area of the 277-mile canyon cut by the Colorado River. For a vivid description of the Grand Canyon, read famed essayist Charles Dudley Warner's account of his trip west in 1890. Warner's report is one chapter of his book Our Italy, found in California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives, 1849-1900.
Rust Camp, Grand Canyon, Arizona, circa 1909.
Taking the Long View, 1851-1991
- Mapping the National Parks documents the history, cultural aspects and geological formations of areas that eventually became the U.S. National Parks. Search, for example, on the keyword Acadia to find images such as a 1942 Topographic Map of Acadia National Park and vicinity. A search on Grand Canyon will produce, among other items, a 1919 Rand McNally map of Grand Canyon National Park.
- To learn more about the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage, see the chronology in Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920. For additional resources concerning that material, view the introduction to the collection included in the Collection Connections section of the Learning Page.
- Also, don't miss the Today in History features on Yosemite and Mt. Rainier parks, and the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916.
- Search on Mount Desert in Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 to see more treasures of Acadia National Park, such as Anemone Cave.
- To see over 35 views of the majestic Grand Canyon, search on Grand Canyon in these collections:
