A wayside exhibit entitled "Rusticators Arrive" is positioned along the deck railing at Jordan Pond House.
The exhibit's title appears over an historic photograph of ten men and women and a child posing on boulders. Some hold walking sticks. A caption: "Rusticator hikers, known as "rockers," scrambled over granite boulders and ledges in skirts and suits in the late 1860s."
Text reads: "Mount Desert Island attracted more "people from away" in the1800s after Hudson River School artists revealed the island's beauty in their paintings. These "rusticators," mostly from Boston and New York, came for simple pleasures in the outdoors — to walk, picnic, boat, and fish. They stayed in local homes and, after the Civil War, in the many hotels built to accommodate the influx. In the 1890s and early 1900s wealthy financiers and industrialists arrived and built lavish coastal mansions, ironically referred to as summer 'cottages.'"
A quote: "During the day parties of several persons... start off on walking expeditions five, ten, and fifteen miles... on the sea-shore or up the mountains. There is a vigorous, sensible, healthy feeling in all they do." - "Mount Desert," Harpers New Monthly Magazine, August 1872
An inset features a painting. A low sun casts golden rays on frothy waves as they crash against rocks. A caption reads: "Frederic E. Church, a leader of the Hudson River School, painted breathtaking scenes of the Mount Desert Island area in the mid-1800s."
