Written in Granite: Acadia's Changeable Histories

Maine Historical Society - Programs Podcast

Mount Desert Historical Society Executive Director Tim Garrity; Recorded September 22, 2016 - George Dorr intended for Acadia National Park's "noble granite masses" to "become true historic documents that will record forever to succeeding generations the human background of the Park." However, no history lasts forever. The French historian Fernand Braudel taught that "History is the child of its time." The names that Dorr gave to Acadia's mountains tell us as much about the time of the park's founding as it does about the more distant past. In this illustrated lecture, reprized from the MHS Annual Meeting in 2016, Tim Garrity reflects on the history of the park as we understand it now and as the founders understood it a century ago.