Sieur de Monts
Penobscot Marine Museum
The “heart” of Acadia National Park doesn’t refer to the geographical center of the park on Mount Desert Island. Rather, it’s a natural spring located between Cadillac Mountain and the ocean on the island’s east side that serves as the symbolic birthplace of the park.
George Dorr purchased the spring and the land around it when he learned a spring water bottler was aiming to buy it. He donated the property, which he named Sieur de Monts, to the conservation trust he helped establish. The 1909 purchase was one of the first for the trust’s nascent national park project.
Over the spring, Dorr built a domed canopy covered in red clay tiles, and piped water from the spring to an artificial pool where visitors could dip a cup in for a drink. On a rock nearby, he carved the words “Sweet Waters of Acadia.” Picnic tables and benches invited people to sit and relax, and sometimes concerts were held there.
In the years that followed, and especially during his time as the park’s first superintendent, Dorr reshaped the area around the spring, transforming a landscape long used by the Wabanaki for fresh drinking water into an area that today encompasses the spring and the springhouse, Wild Gardens of Acadia, the tarn, the Abbe Museum, the Nature Center, and the Great Meadow.
The alterations to the landscape had unintended consequences, particularly for the wetland of the Great Meadow. Today, the National Park Service and several local partners, including tribal members, are engaged in a major wetland restoration project to restore the meadow’s health and renew a commitment to keep Acadia wild and its waters sweet.
