REGIONAL INFORMATION The Downeast Guide The Cat MDI Bio Lab Jackson Laboratory Southwest Harbor/Tremont Chamber of Commerce

Encompassing 108 square miles, Mount Desert Island is the third largest island off the contiguous 48 states. Only Long Island and Martha's Vineyard are larger. Named in 1604 for its barren summits by French explorer Samuel de Champlain, the island was first claimed by the French although before the French, Native American populations from inland Maine regularly visited the island in summer to gather shellfish. After approximately 150 years of war, the English settled here in the 1760s. For many years farming and lumbering were the major occupations. A popular site is the Mill Pond in Somesville, first settled in 1761 by Abraham Somes of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The island's 10,000 year-round population swells in summer. According to officials at Acadia National Park, as many as four million visitors come to MDI each year.

Divided into two halves by Somes Sound, the only fiord on the east coast of the United States, the island is comprised of four townships - Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Southwest Harbor and Tremont. In each of the these townships are many villages, each with a unique identity. With over 4,000 residents, Bar Harbor is the largest of the four towns and the town not only closest to campus but the town which experiences the largest tourist populations.

Bar Harbor is also home to two research laboratories: The Jackson Laboratory and Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL). Both labs are involved in the human genome project. For some years, The Jackson Laboratory has been deciphering the mouse genome, and is the repository for all information on the mouse genome. Scientists from all over the world not only contribute to this database but have access to it. The county's largest employer and a world-renowned center for research in mammalian genetics and diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and AIDS, The Jackson Laboratory is also a major center for the production of strains of inbred genetic mice which are used by scientists throughout the world.

MDIBL, a smaller and predominantly summer research laboratory in Salisbury Cove, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1998, and as part of the centennial celebration announced that they were beginning to sequence the genome of the dogfish shark. Using marine organisms such as the skate and dogfish shark, scientists study the kidney, liver, heart, lung, and eye. Understanding how these organs function in marine models enables scientists to learn what happens when these organs malfunction or become diseased in humans.

Mount Desert, the other town on the east side of the island, has a year-round population of over 2,000. In summer, that population is swelled, not by tourists but by seasonal homeowners and the pace of life there is different--more like summer populations of bygone eras. It is a town with many large estates and private lands open to the public.

Southwest Harbor and Tremont comprise the towns on the west side of the island, often referred to as the quiet side. Not only are there fewer tourists but there are more boat building and boat servicing operations there. And Southwest is home to a number of boat builders, including Hinckley Yachts.

The other major industry for all four island towns is fishing--lobstering, scalloping, shrimping and ground fishing. This is an industry in increasing peril and one that has recently adopted stringent conservation measures. The principal fishery, lobstering, has enacted management strategies to protect the resource. In addition to limiting the size and number of traps, minimum and maximum size of lobsters that can be taken, and protecting females by notching and then throwing them back in, the industry and government have established a zone program that will place management of the fishery into the fishermen's hands.