ABANDONED TRAILS OF ACADIA NATIONAL PARK: SIEUR DE MONTS SPRING

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

BAR HARBOR TIMES
JULY 21, 1960

To the Editor;
Visitors at Sieur de Monts Spring may at times wonder about the early history. One standing on the large flat rock in the brook and watching the water bubble and gorgie from beneath it may think he is beholding a natural event, when in fact, he is looking at the result of human planning and effort.
In the summer of 1907 John Prescott, owner of the property developed the spring at the upper end of the Harding Farm, so called, which was originally known as Red Rock Spring, and later, Mt. Kebo Spring, undertook to do the same thing with what is now the Sieur de Monts Spring.
I learned this quite by accident. One day in the summer above mentioned I was walking with a friend of my parents through the woods in that section. As a boy I had fished in the brook that flowed out of the meadow - now known as the tarn - and I knew that area very well.
Near the brook at that time was a small boiling spring with a much larger one several yards away.
As we came into the path off the Seal Harbor Road we heard from the valley below us the sound of horses and a stone drag. Coming into the clearing at the foot of the hill we found Mr Prescott with a team of horses dragging a large flat rock towards the smaller spring, and learned that he was planning another bottling plant similar to the one at Red Rock (Mt. Kebo). He told us he was setting that flat rock over the smaller spring in the attempt to force the water back into the larger one which he planned to deepen and enlarge.
The bottling plant, as such, did not prove to be the success had hoped, and in course of time the property passed to other hands and now has been developed into the beauty spot we have today. But that rock is the same one we saw put in place over 50 years ago.
What we see today is not a freak of nature but a deliberate attempt to improve on what nature has provided.
I can vouch for this as I am the only living person who was present when that stone was set in its present position.
Sincerely,
Rev. Charles S. Mitchell, DD

SIEUR DE MONTS SPRING HOUSE
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

WHO WAS THE REV CHARLES S. MITCHELL

A piece I found in an article in the Bar Harbor Times dated August 2, 1922 states in part;
"Mr. Charles S. Mitchell served Long Island till cold weather, than he moved his family to Bar Harbor and spent the winter assisting in special services at Cranberry Isles, Matinitus, and other places. It seemed best to locate Mr. Mitchell at Corea where he can be of help in the town of Gouldboro, as there is not a minister in the town."
In the December 6, 1922 Bar Harbor Times, upon the passing of Rev. A.P. MacDonald, who had been the head of the Sea Coast Mission. A piece in that same paper was written by the Rev. Charles S. Mitchell, whose title states the following;
"Rev. A.P. MacDonald; A word of appreciation by Rev. Charles S. Mitchell, who was for some time associated with Mr. MacDonald as Assistant Missionary."
In a copy of the Bar Harbor Times dated July 26, 1922 an article begins with the following;
"BAR HARBOR MAN IS ORDAINED AT COREA
Charles S. Mitchell after service in Sea Coast Mission is now Baptist Minister.
A council of churches of Hancock County, was called by the church at Corea Wednesday, July 19th, to set apart by ordination to the Baptist ministry, Charles S. Mitchell who has been serving this church for the past two months, after nearly two years in the Sea Coast Mission work."
An article from the Bar Harbor Times in 1915 states that "Charles S. Mitchell expects to enter Gordon Theological School in Boston the middle of next month."