Criterion C: Art
Criterion C: Landscape Architecture
Criterion A: Community Planning and Development
Criterion A: Entertainment/Recreation
Criterion A: Social History
Criterion A: Conservation
Period of Significance: 1844 - 1942
National Level of Significance
The Mount Desert Island Hiking Trail System (trail system) is a nationally significant recreational resource that has important associations with the history of Mount Desert Island and the establishment of Acadia National Park. The trail system meets the registration requirements of Associated Property Type I.A. Hiking Trails of the amended Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF) for the Historic Resources of Acadia National Park, which was accepted by the Keeper of the National Register on June 26, 2017. The trail system's significance under Criterion A in the area of Art derives from its associations with prominent Hudson River School landscape artists who came to experience the islands dramatic coastal scenery beginning in the late 1830s and early 1840s and introduced the area to a wider audience through their writings and artwork. These "artist-explorers" adapted Native American foot paths, cart paths, and settlement roads for recreational hiking and created a network of trails to reach prominent vistas and viewpoints that served as inspiration for their writings and paintings. Many of the routes they used were not publicized or documented, but the viewpoints represented in their paintings and drawings can still be found in the system of trails that subsequently developed. The artists, authors, and tourists known as Rusticators who followed the earliest painters adapted existing routes and blazed new ones to visit the scenic locations, creating in the process a cohesive system of hiking trails. The framework of the current trail system started to take shape after 1866, when descriptions of popular hiking routes that correspond to trails in the system first appeared in print. The trails developed and documented by the Rusticators between 1866 and 1890 are significant under Criterion A in the areas of Social History and Entertainment/Recreation for their association with the islands emergence as a major tourist destination in the northeastern United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The trails constructed or improved from 1890 to 1937 and the memorial plaques associated with some of them are primarily significant under Criteria A and C in the areas of Community Planning and Development, Conservation, and Landscape Architecture for their association with the beautification and land conservation efforts initiated by the Village Improvement Associations and Village Improvement Societies (VIA/VIS). Employing Picturesque-style landscape design principles, the VIA/VIS of the islands towns expanded the trail system as a means to improve the recreational hiking experience for the islands growing population of full-time and summer residents. The trails constructed or improved by the National Park Service (NPS) with labor supplied by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) between 1933 and 1942 are significant under Criteria A and C in the areas of Entertainment/Recreation, Conservation, and Landscape Architecture for their associations with the development of Acadia National Park-the first national park in the Eastern part of the United Statesand as examples of the Rustic style employed throughout the National Park System in the early twentieth century. Acadias distinctive trail system, carriage road system (NR 1979), and motor road system together form a cohesive tripartite circulation system that provides access to the scenic beauty of Mount Desert Island.
The period of significance for the trail system begins in 1844, with the artist Thomas Coles first documented impressions of the islands landscapes from viewpoints that influenced the trail systems development, and ends in 1942, when the CCC work at Acadia National Park concluded.