BAR HARBOR — Mount Desert Island offers other sights besides the natural beauty found in Acadia National Park.

Nestled among the trees at Sieur de Monts Spring stands a white masonry building with a stucco roof. The building houses the Robert Abbe Museum of Stone Age Antiquities, dedicated to preserving and exhibiting artifacts related to Maine Indians.

Dr. Robert Abbe, a New York surgeon, developed an interest in early Indians ____________in 1922, after purchasing some stone tools that he found in a Bar Harbor shop. ___________He collected many artifacts and sought a place to display them to the public. __________Unfortunately, his museum did not open until 1928; Dr. Abbe died several months ____________earlier.

The museum displays countless stone tools and other artifacts recovered by archaeological digs at shell mounds and other historical sites in Maine. Some archaeological excavations, especially at the sites of Indian villages on the islands and peninsulas near Mount Desert Island, were funded or conducted by museum staff.

Located near the museum entrance is a fullscale model of a wigwam, the type of housepit apparently built by the ancestors of Maine Indians sometime before 1,000 A.D.

Recently, the Abbe Museum has introduced a “living exhibit.” Members of those Indians tribes indigenous to Maine (Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot) visit the museum during summer weekends to demonstrate their tribal crafts. Such crafts include basket-weaving, flintknapping, and jewelry.

Maine Indians will teach four basketry workshops in July and August. This year, the Aroostook Micmac Council gathered ash-splint baskets and hand tools for a basketry exhibit called “Our Lives in Our Hands.” The museum will show this exhibit through the fall.

The Abbe Museum, which operates seven days a week, will close Oct. 15. The daily hours are: until June 30, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; July 1 to Aug. 31, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sept. 1 to Oct. 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Admittance is $1.50 for adults and 50 cents for children aged 12 and under.

Longtime visitors to Mount Desert Island can recall when the Mount Desert Oceanarium provided a wonderful peek at ocean life from a small building near the Southwest Harbor Coast Guard Base.

Today, the Oceanarium encompasses two other locations, a lobster hatchery at One Harbor Place in Bar Harbor and an oceanarium on Route 3 near Thomas Bay.

The lobster hatchery raises young lobsters for ocean release, while the second oceanarium features harbor seals, the Maine Lobster Museum, and the Thomas Bay Nature Walk.

The College of the Atlantic, located on Route 3 just north of downtown Bar Harbor, operates a natural history museum in a granite summer cottage known as the Turrets. This museum exhibits wildlife, sea creatures, and plants found on Mount Desert Island and in Maine coastal waters.

The Natural History Museum at the College of the Atlantic is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily from mid-June to Labor Day. Admittance is $2.50 for adults, $1.50 for senior citizens, 50 cents for children ages 3 to 12, and free for members.

Located at the Jesup Memorial Library on Mt. Desert Street in Bar Harbor is the Bar Harbor Historical Society Museum. Open 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday from mid-June to October, this museum offers an excellent photographic exhibit that captures island history. There is no charge for admittance.