Summerguide 2016 | view this story as a .pdf

The true historical scope of Acadia, sweeping north from Bath to the border of Canada, has hosted some of the world’s most famous names within its borders.

From Staff & Wire Reports

It was Acadia’s rugged shores and startling natural beauty that first drew artists from the Hudson River School of painting to Maine during the 19th century. Their romantic renderings of Acadia’s wild beauty, and the popularity of the “luminism” painting movement that they championed, began to attract the wealthy families of industrialists and traders, keen to claim their corner of this pristine summer retreat.

These well-heeled summer visitors flocked from Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City to the shores of Acadia, where they began competing with one another to build the most palatial estates and enviable gardens, sealing Acadia’s reputation as a getaway for the upper echelons of society. The seasonal influx was so dramatic, the visitors even garnered their own label: “rusticators.” Of this illustrious crowd, several names jump out: the Roosevelts, the Astors, and the DuPonts. The crown of America’s mercantile aristocracy have all summered in the area over the years, gilding Acadia with the luster of their wealth and mystery. Perennial summer visitor Norman Mailer was an acute observer of both the people and the geography that defined this area.

Norman Mailer on Otter Cliffs

“I had heard the growl of black waters on black rock at Otter Cliffs,” Mailer writes in Harlot’s Ghost, in a vignette he later reprised for Esquire. Challenged climb to the sheer, slippery monument as a rite of passage, the young Mailer risked a look down during his ascent and was scared out of his wits by “the wet, black stone as oily as a garage floor.” The nooks and crannies and tussocks of grass on the cliff’s oily face reminded him of “human body parts.” Later in life, Mailer would inflict his own Maine initiation on his children. In an interview with Portland Magazine, Mailer’s youngest son, John Buffalo Mailer, recalled summers spent preparing to climb Mount Katahdin. “It started to hail as we were on the middle of the Knife Edge. I don’t think I had ever been quite as scared in the eight years I had been alive, than I was in that moment.” [See “When Your Name Is Mailer, You Don’t Phone It In,” by Colin W. Sargent: bit.ly/PMNormanMailer]

“Mount Desert is more luminous than the rest of Maine,” Norman declares in Harlot’s Ghost. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who’d spent many summers here with his family, certainly knew how to pick the perfect summer spot. During the 1970s, the family rented “Fortune’s Rock,” a stunning 1937 residence cantilevered over Somes Sound. Designed as a summer abode for New York artists and heiress Clare Fargo Thomas, the sleek lines of the building are in harmony with its breathtaking surroundings. Mailer and his kids were particularly fond of leaping from the timbered balcony of Fortune’s Rock twenty feet into the icy water of the sound below. For Mailer, Acadia represented a sanctuary of calm from the storm of the New York literati scene.

Astors in Acadia

The Astor clan, hailing originally from Germany before finding their fortune in the fur trade, owned mansions, hotels, and cottages in Bar Harbor and around Mount Desert. A fixture of the “rusticator” scene, their wealth and glamor enhanced Acadia’s reputation as a summer destination.

Scandal rocked the family recently, when it was revealed that Anthony Marshall of the Astor clan had taken advantage of his aging mother’s slipping mind to plunder her fortune. Brooke Astor, a prominent socialite and philanthropist, kept a much-beloved estate called Cove End, which overlooks the Northeast Harbor Yacht Club. In her will, Astor gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Maine charities, including the Maine Community Foundation. Marshall passed away in 2014, aged 90. He only served two months of his three-year prison term due to ailing health.

The New Newport

While we may always associate the Vanderbilt name with the flashy appeal of Newport, Rhode Island, many of the family preferred the relative simplicity and peace of Bar Harbor. Patriarch William Henry Vanderbilt first removed to Maine in the early 1880s. George Vanderbilt, William’s youngest and supposedly favorite son, was evidently smitten with us. Upon his father’s death, George bought the former Gouverneur Morris Ogden Cottage in Bar Harbor, renaming the estate Pointe d’Acadie. In 1895, older brother William Kissam Vanderbilt, seeking refuge from the media storm surrounding his divorce, sailed up to Bar Harbor on his yacht Valiant, at the time the largest vessel in the world. William spent much of that summer moored off Pointe d’Acadie, avoiding the press. According to the New York Social Diary, “Unlike at Newport, few traces remain of the Vanderbilts at Bar Harbor. Many of the houses they occupied: Mossley Hall, Pointe d’Acadie, Islecote, have been demolished.” Despite their physical absence, traces of the Vanderbilts can be found in the old guest books of the famous inns and restaurants of Acadia.

Camelot northeast

Before she was Mrs. John F. Kennedy, before her paparazzi-flashed years as “Jackie O,” or her hidden decades on Park Avenue as an editor at Viking Press, young Jacqueline Bouvier spent her summers not simply as a debutante in Newport, Rhode Island, but also up here in Bar Harbor.

“The Auchinclosses had an estate up here,” says Denise Morgan, co-owner of Oli’s Trolley of Bar Harbor, “and no doubt visited here every summer with Jackie and her sister, Lee Radziwill. The estate is gone now–the fire of 1947 took it–but I believe part of the wall is still there,” right at the corner of Routes 3 and 233, also known as Eagle Lake Road. Trolley drivers mention it as they pass by, talking about the rich and famous of Bar Harbor.

“‘So Jackie Bouvier walked the streets of Bar Harbor,’ one of our tourists remarked once while taking the tour.’”

We can’t vouch for the streetwalking, but the presence of the nation’s top debutante must have made the lovely Bar Harbor summers here just a bit lovelier.

But wait a minute. Deborah Dwyer of the Bar Harbor Historical Society says instead that “Hugh D. Auchincloss stayed at ‘Redwood.’ It’s an important early William Ralph Emerson Shingle Style design. It’s very much still standing, and that’s where Jackie would have stayed.”

As for the lost house mentioned by the trolley company, Dwyer has told us, “I have a ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture of the house that stood there on a slide presentation I do to show the property before and after the school was built. Part of the wall survived, but the wrought-iron gate disappeared. The last people who had it were the Sultan ruler of Turkey and Princess Bernadina.”

Only in Bar Harbor would a sultan owning a house in Bar Harbor be floated as a more plausible anecdote.

Rockefeller Center

John D. Rockefeller, a high-school-dropout, dreamed of racking up $100,000 and living to a hundred. Though he fell two years shy of achieving a centennial, Rockefeller far outstripped his financial goal. To this day he remains the wealthiest individual in U.S. history. However, it was John’s youngest son–the anxious and subdued John “Junior” Rockefeller–whose fate is inexorably entwined with Maine history. His passion for the state’s wild landscape inspired the creation of Acadia National Park as we know it today.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, paid their first visit to Acadia in the early 20th century, shortly after their marriage in 1901. At this point, Bar Harbor was already swarming with the glamorous rusticator crowd. For the reserved and frugal Rockefeller Jr., the Bar Harbor scene held little appeal. Instead, the couple instead gravitated to the relative peace of Seal Harbor, on the southeastern shore of the island. This sheltered cove would become the family’s annual summer getaway. Their son and future Vice President, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, was even born in the holiday cottage they rented in the bay during the summer of 1908. John Jr. began construction on what would become the family vacation home for over 50 years, a sprawling 100-room mansion named “The Eyrie.” To put an exclamation point on the exclusivity, John Jr. commissioned a wall around the perimeter of the house, inset with pieces of tile brought back from the Great Wall of China.

In 1962, the stately pile, anachronistic its surroundings, was deemed unsuitable for continued use and demolished by the family. Parts of the wall and Abby’s gardens still remain, while the rest of the family scattered around Acadia, inhabiting individual properties or private islands.

The Washington Post ran a feature story on the Rockefellers’ presence in Acadia in 1979, recounting how John Junior’s five sons displayed their inherent business acumen by setting up a flower stall outside the country club. It was rumored that the boys even hitchhiked from the club to the The Eyrie. On one such occasion, the driver expressed surprise at a young Rockefeller without his own car. “Who do you think we are, Vanderbilts?” was the retort.

During his summers, John Junior, a keen horseman, spent much of his time overseeing the creation of a network of carriage roads around the family estate. The patriarch showed an aptitude for designing and landscaping, creating miles of flowing carriageway between 1915 to 1933 that give unparalleled access to forest and coastline. Today the carriageways remain, part of John Jr.’s Acadian legacy. There are 45 miles of meandering public paths uninterrupted by autoroutes, their 17 arched granite bridges grinning with coping stones often referred to as “Rockefeller’s teeth.”

Martha Stewart, Lifestyle Guru

Seal Harbor houses another business mogul on its exclusive shore; albeit a much more modern one. Martha Stewart, doyenne of domesticity and media juggernaut, owns an expansive vacation home atop Ox Hill, overlooking the bay below. The former residence of one of Acadia’s blue-blooded patriarchs, Edsel Ford, “Skylands” sits on 63 acres of prime Acadian coastline and forest. Stewart reportedly bought the property in 1997 after attending a cocktail party hosted by its then owner, Edward Leede. It was clearly love at first sight. As soon as Stewart heard the property was going up for sale, she stepped up with a check.

The residence is a true Acadian masterwork, 35,000 square feet of Italian revival architecture, a style that was popular among the rusticators putting down foundations in the area during the 1920s. Stewart has done little to change the exterior of the home that the Fords once inhabited, back when they rubbed shoulders with Rockefellers, Astors, and Vanderbilts in Bar Harbor. She claims the house even came with Ellen Ford’s collection of Danish and French china. Obviously, the interior has since been given the Martha Stewart golden touch. No surprise that Skylands is featured frequently as the focus for decor and gardening articles in Martha Stewart Living magazine.

Outside, the landscape is rugged and rocky, awash with white pines, Danish firs, and moss-covered boulders. According to local sources, the caretakers of Skylands collect the area’s iconic pink granite to crush down and re-cover Ms. Stewart’s sweeping driveway every spring.

Stewart has described Maine as her ideal destination for an active vacation and an escape from running her media empire. While she’s here, Martha can be seen enjoying the same Maine delights as the rest of us: eating lobster rolls in Trenton, hiking the Beehive trails, and kayaking around the bay. A glance at her eponymous blog reveals a multitude of articles celebrating the Maine lifestyle and untouched beauty. No surprise, then, that Martha’s describes this little parcel of Maine as her “favorite place.”

Margaret Wise Brown, Children’s Book Legend

“Winter came and the snow fell softly, like a great quiet secret in the night, cold and still.” Margaret Wise Brown’s description of a snowy scene in The Little House was no doubt inspired by Maine winters spent in her home on Vinalhaven. Brown wrote many of her beloved children’s books, which include The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, while staying at the former quarry master’s home on the island. Named “The Only House,” the Vinalhaven sanctuary became the place where Brown daydreamed, wrote, entertained friends, and lived the island life, as dictated by the season and the sea. “I’ll meet you at the black buoy,” she’d tell friends who made the trek to Rockland to visit her.

Despite her books, Brown never had children of her own. In 1952, at just 42, while recovering after surgery, she kicked her foot over her head can-can style to prove how well she was feeling. Heartbeats later, she was dead of an embolism. Her ashes were scattered not far from her tree overlooking the water at the edge Vinalhaven. The rough stone marking the spot is inscribed, “Margaret Wise Brown, writer of Songs and Nonsense.”

Tess Gerritsen, Novelist

In a post from her blog, author Tess Gerritson writes: “I’ve been a resident of Maine for 17 years, and although I’ll never be considered a real ‘Mainer,’ I do feel like one.” While the San Diego-born Gerritsen may never attain the status of a dyed-in-the-wool Mainer, she’s a jewel nontheless in the state’s literary crown.

Raised by Chinese immigrant parents in California, Gerritsen grew up writing and creating characters. Since storytelling was never considered a viable career in her family, Gerritsen instead pursued medicine in California and Honolulu, along with her husband, Jeff.

“Then I burned out on being on an island and practicing medicine, and we moved to Maine,” she told Portland Magazine in 1996. But why Maine? According to Gerritsen, the decision was spontaneous, and perhaps serendipitous. “It is all based on an article written by Bill Levanworth in Cruising World, she says. “He wrote an article about Camden; and my husband, who is an avid sailor, happened to pick up that magazine, read about Camden and said, ‘Oh, we’re going on vacation on the East Coast. Let’s drive up the coast of Maine and see what it’s like.’” One glance at Camden’s scenic harbor and the Gerritsens knew that they’d found their new home.

The relocation turned out to be beneficial for Gerritsen’s growing writing career.  With two published romance novels under her belt, Gerritsen went on to quit medicine and focus on writing full-time. It was in Camden that she formulated the ideas for her vastly successful Rizzoli & Isles novel  series in  2001. She has since penned 17 works of fiction and amassed a net worth of over $4 million. The final season of the TV series based on her work, Rizzoli & Isles, will hit screens worldwide this summer.

See Tess Gerritsen speak about her latest thriller novel “Playing with Fire” at Skidompha Library in Daramiscotta, August 10.

Stephen King, Writer

One of Maine’s most famous literary exports is a benevolent spirit in a comically gothic-style mansion in Bangor. Stephen King, master of horror and one of the most successful writers of his generation, was born just down the road at Maine Medical Center in Portland. This isn’t news to Mainers, who have spent the past couple of decades hearing the same old tag, even when traveling in Europe: “Oh, Maine, that’s where Stephen King’s from, right?”

Today the King family divides its summers between Palmer Lake in Lovell and their mansion in Bangor. Lovell holds bittersweet connotations for King, who in 1999 was hit by a van while taking one of his long walks around the area.

It has been suggested that Lisbon High School inspired the setting for alumnus King’s first published novel, Carrie. “It’s definitely set in Lisbon High School,” asserts Margaret Frankenberger, who works in the school office and graduated a year ahead of King. “Stephen mentions kids we grew up with by name.” Indeed, the school’s stark gymnasium, huddled close to Route 196, bears a strong resemblance to the fateful site of Carrie’s high school prom.

A number of King’s other novels are also set in Maine, including Bag of Bones, Pet Sematary, and Cujo, in which the rugged landscape and historic brick towns serving as dramatic backdrops to the narrative. The fictional town of Derry, the location of King’s terrifying novel IT, is often cited as a recognizable imitation of Bangor. Let’s just hope we don’t find Pennywise The Clown skipping through The Queen City.

Although the famously reticent King rarely gives interviews, he keeps his army of fans sated with regular tweets about his latest projects. Imminent releases include his latest novel, End of Watch, the finale to the New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers. On the silver screen, the first film of King’s hugely popular fantasy series The Dark Tower is due for release in 2017. The sci-fi epic will star Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. King fans, stay tuned.

J.J. Abrams, Director

Unless you’ve been living in a galaxy far, far away, you can’t have failed to notice the resurrection of the biggest movie franchise in history this year. After Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens broke the year’s box-office record, its director is probably in need of some vacation time. Camden residents, keep your eyes peeled. J.J. Abrams and his wife, Brewer native Kate McGrath, own a summer retreat in 60 acres of prime lakefront real estate just outside of town. This isn’t just a place for Abrams to dutifully visit the in-laws, either. Speaking to the New York Times in 2006, Abrams revealed he’d been coveting his own place Downeast for some time. “For the past few years we’ve rented a house in Camden, Maine. I’d love to buy one.” When he finally purchased his dream vacation home, the director/writer/producer’s delight was apparent. Real Maine Real Estate in Yarmouth  received the following enthusiastic note, according to realmaine.net: “Holy Shnikies! You’re a Genius! Amazing Work With The Price. THANK YOU! Huge Thank You. I Know You Worked Hard (And Brilliantly) To Make This Happen. Katie And I Really Appreciate It.”

Born in 1966, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams’s feverish rise to Hollywood power includes his Emmy-winning production of Alias (featuring Jennifer Garner and Maine native Rachel Nichols) as well as Lost. Movies include Mission Impossible 3, Star Trek, Star Trek into Darkness, Star Trek Ghost Protocol, and on and on.

Abrams has also visited Maine for business as well as pleasure. In 2006, Stephen King invited him here for a “panel discussion on creativity,” according to the Bangor Daily News. The pair obviously hit it off: Abrams now produces the Hulu series 11.22.63, based on King’s novel of the same name.

Given the rumors that Abrams has passed the Star Wars torch on to Rian Johnson, perhaps the film wunderkind will have more time to enjoy the views from his Maine mansion this summer?

ACTORS

Susan Sarandon

(b.1946) The queen of the silver screen grew up spending summers on Mount Desert Island with her large family (she’s one of nine siblings). Years later, Sarandon bought the same property once rented by her family. Most recently, she hit headlines when she stumped for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign at colleges around Maine.

John Travolta & Kelly Preston

(b.1954) & (b.1962) The Hollywood power couple has been visiting Isleboro since the 1990s, when Islesboro resident and pal Kirstie Alley first extolled its virtues to Travolta. Their elegant 6-bedroom Tudor-revival mansion overlooks the shore. Despite keeping a low profile around the island, the pair has unintentionally made local news on occasion. In a tragic accident at Bangor airport, Travolta was left distraught after his two small dogs were run over by an airport vehicle. That was not Travolta’s only aviation trouble in Maine. A skilled pilot certified to fly multiple aircraft types (he owns a Boeing 707 and was the first non-test pilot to fly the Airbus A380), Travolta has also been chastised by neighbors for swooping his private jet too close to the island’s peaceful shore.

Robert Montgomery

(1904-1981) and daughter Elizabeth Montgomery (1933-1995). Old Hollywood had its stake in Acadia as well. Leading man Robert Montgomery owned a house at Indian Point on North Haven. His daughter, Elizabeth Montgomery, star of the hit 1950s show Bewitched, also spent her summers here. A great movie pairing: Maine’s John Ford directs Vacationland summer resident Robert Montgomery in They Were Expendable, about the PT boats of World War II. Log line: “Little boats, big job.”

Caitlin FitzGerald

(b.1983) The actress and star of Showtime’s Masters of Sex grew up in Camden. She comes from a pedigree of success; her grandfather was the Deputy Director of the CIA under the Kennedy Administration and her aunt a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. In 2012, Caitlin wrote and starred in her own  film, Like The Water, set in Camden. [See our cover story, Septermber 2014]

David Morse

(b.1953) Famous for his roles in The Green Mile, Disturbia, and St. Elsewhere, Morse has summered in Bar Harbor since visiting a friend here in 1994. In an interview with Portland Magazine, he described his perfect Maine afternoon. “We ride our bikes to Jordan Pond House and we have our lobster salad and popovers and do the whole Park Loop Road once.”

Oliver Platt

(b.1960) Known for his roles in everything from X-Men: First Class to The West Wing, Oliver Platt has summered on North Haven for years.

ARTISTS & WRITERS

George Bellows

(1882-1925) The realist painter was originally known for his depictions of urban life in New York, but in 1912, Bellows began visiting Maine, creating his famous seascapes of Monhegan and Matinicus.

Elizabeth Bishop

(1911-1979) The Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner summered in North Haven for many years. On an early visit Bishop observed: “Maine Islands—small ones—no beach—upright—crowded with firs—no place—no foot-hold—for anything.’”

Ashley Bryan

(b.1923) The multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner and children’s book author lives in Islesford. He uses found items from Maine beaches to create some of his artwork, including sea-glass windows and puppets made out of driftwood.

Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman

(b.1963) & (b.1964) The literary couple summers in Brooklin. Chabon’s novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2001.

Mary Ellen Chase

(1887-1973) The best-selling writer of Mary Peters was born in Blue Hill and was a graduate of the University of Maine. In a 1936 interview in the Portland Sunday Telegram, Chase declared that she wrote “largely because I want to acquaint others…with the splendid character of Maine people, and with the unsurpassed loveliness of Maine fields, shores, and sea.”

Howie Day

(b.1981) The pop singer was born in Bangor and raised in Brewer. His parents own and run Nicky’s Cruisin’ Diner in Bangor.

Kara DioGuardi

(b.1970) The singer-songwriter and Maine native told Portland Monthly in 2013, “Coming to Prospect Harbor takes me back to my time when I felt the most loved, and most connected with my surroundings.”

Jon Fishman

(b.1965) Drummer for the legendary jam-band Phish, Fishman originally hails from Lincolnville.

Dan Fogelberg

(1951-2007) The American musician died at his beloved home on Deer Isle in 2007. His wife told Portland Magazine how Fogelberg fell for Maine: “[Dan] saw the old sea captain’s house on Deer Isle. It had grass coming through the floorboards, and he instantly fell in love with it.”

Terry Goodkind

(b.1948) The fantasy writer, best known for The Sword of Truth TV series, owns a home on Mt. Desert Island. According to BangorDaily News, Goodkind said of arriving in Maine for the first time, “I felt like I’d been misplaced in the cosmos and I belonged in Maine.”

Patty Griffin

(b.1964) The “Rain” singer-songwriter was born in Old Town.

Marsden Hartley

(1877-1943) The American modernist painter and poet was born in Lewiston.

Eric Hopkins

(b.1951) North Haven Island has certainly influenced the soaring coastal landscapes by this well-loved contemporary artist.

David McCullough

(b.1933) The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner keeps a summer residence in Camden.

Don McLean

(b.1945) The “American Pie” singer/songwriter lives in Camden with his family.

Toshiko Mori

(b.1951) and James Carpenter (1948) The star architects built a beautiful house on North Haven Island.

Richard Russo

(b.1949) The novelist and screenwriter, who won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Empire Falls, lives in Camden Maine. This summer he’s following up Nobody’s Fool with Everybody’s Fool.

Noel Paul Stookey

(b.1937) This member of the Peter, Paul & Mary folk trio resides in Blue Hill.

N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009),  and Jamie Wyeth (b.1946)

The Wyeth dynasty encompasses generations of notable painters and illustrators. Andrew Wyeth, son of iconic illustrator Newell Convers Wyeth, is generally recognized as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Andrew’s son, Jamie, charts  his own extraordinary course. Over the years, Maine has featured heavily in the Wyeths’ work, and the Wyeth Center at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland is dedicated to the family’s art.

Susan Minot

(b.1956) The acclaimed novelist has penned a collection of novels (Monkeys, Thirty Girls), short stories and essays (Lust & Other Stories), and has even turned her hand at screenwriting. She wrote the 1995 movie Stealing Beauty, starring another Maine  girl, Liv Tyler, as a young American visiting relatives in Tuscany. Minot’s work has enraptured critics and won her the Prix Femina Étranger in 1987. Minot splits her year between New York City and her home in North Haven. Speaking to Elle magazine, Minot describes her summer retreat as a place where “work is done with a hammer.”

Robert McCloskey

(1914-2003) The Deer Isle resident wrote and illustrated some of Maine’s most beloved children’s fiction, including Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine.

MOGULS/ EMINENT FAMILIES

Robert M. Bass

(b.1948) The billionaire businessman and owner of Aerion Corporation owns a palatial estate in Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island.

Leon Leonwood Bean

(1872-1967) Practically synonymous with Maine, the creator of the eponymous clothing and outdoors brand hails from Greenwood.

The Cabots

One of the “first families of Boston,” these Boston Brahmins made their fortune in trading, medicine, and architecture, dipping their fingers also into politics and philanthropy. Numerous members of the Cabot family have lived on North Haven Island during the summer months.

Henry Ford

(1863-1947) The “Skylands” estate on built on Mt. Desert Island by the father of the Model T for his son Edsel Ford, is now owned by lifestyle magnate Martha Stewart.

Edward C. “Ned” Johnson III

(b.1930) & daughter Abigail Johnson (b.1961) The title of wealthiest seasonal resident of Mount Desert Island is currently held by Edward C. “Ned” Johnson III, head of Fidelity Investments. Johnson, estimated to be worth $8 billion, owns a luxury estate in Bar Harbor.

Roxanne Quimby

(b.1950) The co-founder of Burt’s Bees lives in Winter Harbor and is currently attempting to donate thousands of acres to the National Park Service in order to expand Acadia’s protected land.

John Sculley

(b.1939) The Apple CEO keeps a vacation home near Camden Harbor.

William P. Stewart Jr

The president of MetLife insurance was accused of embezzling over $60 million of his son’s inheritance to squander on chartered jets to his property on Mount Desert Island and the $20 million cruising vessel Scheherazade, which he moored in Northeast Harbor, according to the New York Post.

The Lindberghs

Are the Lindberghs moguls, aviators, or writers? Yes to all three. Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh spent summer idylls on North Haven Island for decades. Read the full story on the Linbergh estate here:
bit.ly/PMLindbergh

The Pulitzers

Shortly before the inception of the Pulitzer Prize, Joseph Pulitzer was one of the first to build a summer home on Mount Desert Island. The family visited the estate in Bar Harbor for many years.

POLITICIANS

Zbigniew Brzezinski

(b.1928) The political scientist served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson  1966–1968 and was President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977–1981. In his down time he relaxes at his home in Northeast Harbor.

William Howard Taft

(1857-1930) The 27th President (1909–1913) was known to enjoy golfing