The French Connection

The French Connection. Acadia National Park. , Frenchman Bay, in front of you, and other prominent names commemorate the region’s rich French heritage, “Acadia” stems from “Arcadia,” a term used by Giovanni Verrazano’s expedition to describe the Atlantic coast in 1524. The name “Mount Desert Island” was given by French explorer and cartographer Samuel Champlain during his 1604 visit. “Cadillac Mountain” honors Antoine de la Mothe-Cadillac, a self-proclaimed French noble who received a large land grant, including all of Mount Desert Island, from King Louis in 1688. The French, however, ultimately lost the struggle to control northeastern North America in the mid-1770s, when British troops defeated the French at Quebec. As you travel around Acadia today, look for other place names that signal Acadia’s French connection., Samuel Champlain mapped the coastline from Cape Cod to Canada and westward to the Great Lakes in the 1613 “Map of New France.” His 1604-1618 expeditions laid the groundwork for French colonization of the New World. , “The island is high and notched in places so that from the sea it gives the appearance of a range of seven or eight mountains. The summits are all bare and rocky . . . I named it “L’ Ile des Monts-deserts.” Samuel Champlain, 1604. , For 12,000 years, Native Americans have inhabited the land we now call Maine. Long before Champlain named Mount Desert Island, some Wabanaki called this land “Pemetic” meaning “a range of mountains.” Today, Wabanaki people maintain an enduring connection to this landscape.