The Fires of 1947 That Remade the Island

In October 1947, a fire that began in a cranberry bog on Mount Desert Island burned for ten days, consumed 17,000 acres, destroyed 67 of Bar Harbor's grandest summer estates, and fundamentally altered the landscape and character of the island. The fire burned so hot that the granite ledge cracked, the harbor filled with smoke visible from fifty miles at sea, and the millionaires who had built their "cottages" on the hillsides above town watched their mansions burn from boats in the harbor.

The estates were never rebuilt. The families — Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Pulitzers — who had made Bar Harbor the Newport of the North simply didn't come back, and the land they'd occupied was donated to Acadia National Park or sold for a fraction of its former value. In the fire's absence, the island's economy shifted from serving the ultra-wealthy to serving everyone, and the National Park — which received thousands of acres of donated estate land — became the democratic institution it is today.

The fire also reshaped the forest. The old-growth spruce and fir that had covered the island were replaced by birch, aspen, and maple — the pioneer species that colonize burned ground — and the famous fall foliage that draws visitors to Acadia every October exists because of the 1947 fire. The deciduous forest that tourists photograph is the scar tissue of a catastrophe, and it is beautiful.

The Bar Harbor Historical Society on Ledgelawn Avenue has photographs of the estates before and after, and the images are startling — sixty-room mansions reduced to chimneys standing alone in ash fields. The fire changed everything: the economy, the ecology, the architecture, and the identity of the island, and understanding it transforms every hike and every autumn leaf into a story about what grows back when the original is gone.