4 Best Sights in Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island

This important museum dedicated to Maine's Indigenous tribes—collectively known as the Wabanaki—is the state's only Smithsonian-affiliated facility and one of the few places in Maine to experience Native culture as interpreted by Native peoples themselves. Spanning 12,000 years, the "core" exhibit, People of the First Light, features items such as birch bark canoes, basketry, and bone tools as well as photos and interactive displays. Changing exhibits often showcase contemporary Native American art. A birchbark canoe made at the Abbe anchors the free Orientation Gallery beside the gift shop at the entrance. Check the website for events, from basket weaving and boatbuilding demonstrations to author talks and family-friendly pop-up rainy days activities.

Opened in 1928, the Abbe's Acadia National Park location at Sieur de Monts is its original home. Longtime exhibits in the small eight-sided building include artifacts from early digs on Mount Desert Island and dioramas of Native American life here before European settlement.

Stepping into the large foyer of this 1903 brick chateau, your view flows through glass doors on the opposite side, then across the piazza and flat lawn to a serene coastal expanse. A business partner of J.P. Morgan, George Bowdoin, and his wife, Julia, built this 13,000-square-foot, 41-room mansion near downtown Bar Harbor as their seasonal residence. Unlike many local summer “cottages” of the nation’s elite, it was spared by the Great Fire of 1947. In 2020, La Rochelle became Bar Harbor Historical Society's museum and the town’s only Gilded Age mansion open to the public. While the Bowdoins’ story weaves through displays, each room has themed exhibits on local history: in the reception room, baskets the Wabanaki made to sell to tourists and displays about local work and industry that shaped the town; the dining room, grand hotels of yesteryear; the master bedroom, old maps (one shows where the fire raged); and so on. Under the elegant wishbone staircase, a “flower room” with a curved wall spotlights the famous landscape artist who created the long-gone sunken garden. In the servants' quarters on the third floor, their story is shared—don’t miss the hallway call box. In the garage, accessible from outside and open when the museum is, free exhibits spotlight today's working waterfront. From dawn to dusk year-round, the public can enjoy the grounds at no charge. The museum has a gift shop.

The trust protects 14,000 acres of land in the Rangeley Lakes area. Both online and at its Rangeley office, the trust has maps and descriptions of its 35 miles of recreational trails and access roads, along with information about fishing, hunting, snowmobiling, picnicking, and other outdoor activities.