Northeast Harbor Is the Side of Mount Desert Island That Never Wanted Visitors

Mount Desert Island has two very different faces. Bar Harbor, on the northern shore, has leaned into tourism for decades, with cruise ships, souvenir shops and the main gateway into Acadia National Park. Northeast Harbor, on the island's quieter southern side, has spent the same period doing the opposite: staying small, staying private, and remaining largely unknown to travellers who haven't already heard of it through family or old money circles.

'Philadelphia on the rocks'

The village's old-money reputation goes back to the late 19th century, when families including the Rockefellers, Fords, Pulitzers, Morgans, Astors and Vanderbilts began building summer 'cottages' along its shoreline. So many came from Philadelphia, the Clark banking family among them, that Northeast Harbor was at times nicknamed 'Philadelphia on the rocks'. John D. Rockefeller Jr. went further than most, financing around 55 miles of carriage roads between 1913 and 1940 connecting his estate near the village to what would become Acadia National Park, a network still used by walkers, cyclists and horse-drawn carriages today.

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A village, not a resort

Unlike Bar Harbor, Northeast Harbor never really built the infrastructure of a tourist destination, and that appears to have been deliberate. Its downtown is a handful of blocks, its harbour still runs on a yacht club and sailing tradition rather than charter-boat tourism, and its best-known gardens, Thuya Garden and the Asticou Azalea Garden, both shaped by landscape architect Charles K. Savage in the mid-20th century, are modest in scale and largely unadvertised. Skylands, an estate built in 1925 for Edsel Ford and later bought by Martha Stewart in 1997, is one of the more visible reminders of how long this particular stretch of coastline has drawn serious money without drawing serious crowds.

Why it has stayed this way

Part of the answer is simply that Mount Desert Island absorbed its tourism pressure elsewhere. With Bar Harbor established as the island's cruise and park gateway, Northeast Harbor never needed to compete for that traffic, and its longtime summer families had every reason to prefer it that way. The result is a place that still functions largely as it did a century ago: a working harbour, a small village, and a scattering of large, unmarked estates set back from the road.

Traveller tips

• Northeast Harbor sits about a 20-minute drive from Bar Harbor, making it an easy detour for those already visiting Acadia National Park.
• Thuya Garden and the Asticou Azalea Garden are both open to the public and free or low-cost to enter, despite the private wealth surrounding them.
• The mail boat to the Cranberry Isles departs from the harbour and makes for a low-key half-day trip.
• Accommodation in the village itself is limited; many visitors base themselves in Bar Harbor or elsewhere on the island and drive over for the day.