Historic Campgrounds

Mount Desert Island and the surrounding area has been a popular tourist destination since the late 1800s. The introduction of the automobile in many ways democratized tourism and made far away places like the coast of Maine accessible to the growing middle class. For most people of color at this time, tourist routes and sites remained unwelcoming.

In spite of the growing popularity of recreational camping in the late 1920s, the newly-created Lafayette National Park (now known as Acadia National Park) did not have its own public campground. Private 'auto-campgrounds' had popped up in the area surrounding the park, including one in Bar Harbor that had been formed by the forced relocation of a Wabanaki summer tent camp. In the early days of Acadia National Park, attention turned to developing visitor facilities including campgrounds.

 

Bear Brook Campground

Please note, Bear Brook is no longer a campground. It is a picnic area and no overnight use is permitted.

The park's first master plan (1927) described Bear Brook as a possible campground location. Between 1927 and 1932, Superintendent George B. Dorr pressed on with the development of Bear Brook Campground complete with water, fire rings and comfort stations. No plans for Bear Brook Campground exist from this time period but it was described as campsites and parking 'provided randomly at the edge of clearings or in areas where the forest understory has been removed.' The first plan for the Bear Brook campground was initiated in 1932 under the direction of Charles Peterson, Chief Assistant Landscape Architect of the NPS Landscape Division located in Yorktown, VA and the New Deal era 'Employment Stabilization Act of 1931 provided funding.In 1933, the reconstruction project proceeded. In 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps added the amphitheater at Bear Brook Campground complete with electric lighting and a projection screen and campfire pit for ranger-led programs. Bear Brook campground was converted to a picnic area sometime prior to 1962.

The Meinecke System

The layout of the Bear Brook Campground clearly reflects the ideas of NPS forest pathologist E.P. Meinecke, who had studied the deterioration of campgrounds in Sequoia National Park due to vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Meinecke's thoughtful approach to campground design and rustic "parkitecture" style became the standard for NPS campground construction in the 1930s and 40s and is visible in all three of Acadia's historic campgrounds.

 

Seawall Campground

Acadia's second campground was originally planned for a site near the Hulls Cove Visitor Center. New Deal-era Recreational Demonstration Project funding allowed the park to purchase of 8,000 'sub-marginal' acres on the western side of Mount Desert Island and the campground plans moved there instead. Survey work began in November of 1935 and by June of 1936 Works Projects Administration (WPA) crews began working on a public campground and picnic area at Seawall. The initial development of Seawall campground consisted of two separate one way loops (Loop A and Loop B) featuring parking spurs and campsites laid out using Meinecke's system of campground development. Loops A and B were not designed to accommodate trailers. The original plans placed a latrine/washroom/shower facility at the center of each loop. The original plans did speculate that future loops may need to be added in the future for trailers, though funding was initially not enough to construct either. In 1937, Loops A and B were constructed along with the first new comfort stations were constructed in Loop A using Emergency Conservation Works funds (ECW) along with fireplaces and heavy timber picnic tables. The comfort station in Loop B was constructed between 1938 and 1939. With the onset of war, a new Naval radio station was constructed at Seawall in 1942.

 

Black Woods Campground

Park founder John D. Rockefeller, Jr. helped finance the construction of a private campground at "The Black Woods" in Otter Creek in the mid 1920s. Later, Rockefeller's donated Blackwoods Campground to Acadia, contingent on a commitment of funds from the federal government for the construction of a section of the Park Loop Road. In 1936, the NPS successfully obtained $500,000 in funding for construction of the road and so work on Blackwoods began. In an effort to make sure that the new campground would be invisible from neighboring Seal Harbor, Rockefeller had his own engineer Paul Simpson, review the proposed location for the campground with Acadia's resident landscape architect Benjamin Breeze. The addition of Acadia's third public campground happened under the RDA program and the CCC conducted most of the work.

Preliminary designs developed for Blackwoods were ambitious. They featured a formal "camp court" at the center, flanked by three separate campground loops ("A," "B," and "C.") with 400 campsites. The "camp court" was to feature an administrative/concession building on the east, perched above an open vista looking down to the waters of Otter Cove. Access to the campground was originally designed from both the villages of Otter Creek and from the Park Loop Road. This design went far beyond the Meinecke system and was very ambitious. Early on it was clear that both funding and the skills of the CCC workers were not sufficient to complete the scope originally planned for Blackwoods. Though work on Blackwoods began in 1936 funding and construction challenges continued until the CCC was disbanded in 1942 and Blackwoods was left largely incomplete.

Due to the ambitious nature of the plans for the campground, only Loop A was completed before World War II. NPS crews began constructing the second loop between 1956 and 1961. Loop C was never constructed. Today, Blackwoods Campground consists of two camping loops, the camp access road, a central "camp court," comfort stations (both historic and contemporary), an amphitheater, and water tank built after World War II. Campsites were historically marked by wood post-markers, which survive only at the intersection of the lateral and perimeter roads.

 

Post-War Campgrounds Work

Wartime rationing of gasoline and deployment of men overseas certainly put a damper on camping. The post-war time period was quite the opposite. By 1955, national park visitation had tripled what it was in the years before the war and park facilities were bearing the brunt. Unfortunately, the massive Great Fire of 1947 burned some of the facilities at Blackwoods campground and in 1949 the park brochure was boasting only two public campgrounds "one near Bar Harobr [Bear Brook] and one at Seawall, near Southwest Harbor.

Over the years additional comfort stations were added and modernized, some of which conflicted with the rustic 'parktecture' of the early park campground work. In 1950, the amphitheatre at Blackwoods Campground was completed and in 1956 the second loop of the campground was added. Before this point, constructin of a second loop had only progressed to the point of clearing the right of way for its loop road. In 1961, Blackwood's new comfortstations were added and changes were made to its layout.

In 1958, "Life" magaize listed Seawall Campground as one of Amerias "50 Best Camping Areas" and in 1961 the Seawall amphitheatre was constructed.

The Acadia Job Corps, part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, constructed new picnic tables at firepites in the camprgrounds and the 1970s and 80s saw upgrades to the administrative facilities as well as water and sewar systems. A new stage at the Blackwoods amphiteatre was constructed in 1977.