Elite visitors favored Islesboro as summer resort

ISLESBORO IS THE MOST EXCLUSIVE SUMMER RESORT, declared a breathless headline in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Aug. 13, 1906. That was back in the days when rich people and their resorts were regarded with awe by mere mortals, and the gap between the nation’s richest and poorest citizens was wider than the Grand Canyon.

But could this be true? What about Newport, R.I., and Bar Harbor, Maine, and Saratoga, N.Y.? Could this little “Isle of Enchantment” be more exclusive than those places that get all the ink in history books describing the lifestyles of the rich and famous?

The story was reprinted from the Boston Sunday Post without comment. And of course, it was only partially true, respecting one end of the island. Bangoreans of a less exclusive caste than the wealthy families from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis also had left their mark on this “modern Utopia” in Penobscot Bay. But first let’s give the awed reporter from Boston his or her due.

First some name dropping. Waldorf Astor had come to Islesboro on his honeymoon. The name alone speaks blue books even if you have no idea who he was. Miss Rose Cleveland, sister of the former president, was included among the cottagers, as was Charles Dana Gibson, the illustrator of Gibson girls fame, and John Turner Atterbury, one of the most influential men on Wall Street. There were Biddles and Birds and Browns and a host of people from Commonwealth Avenue.

Edith Wharton was a visitor in 1907, and ex-President Theodore Roosevelt stopped in to see his daughter in 1917. Famous yachtsmen such as J.P. Morgan and George W. Vanderbilt wouldn’t dream of passing by without a stopover on their way to Bar Harbor.

Islesboro’s exclusivity lay not so much in the wealth of its summer inhabitants, however, as in their ability to exclude lesser mortals, according to the Boston reporter: “Although the island is not a large one, its fortifications are so effectually raised and maintained that only the elect may enter there. People are carefully weighed in the scales of social importance and if found lacking Islesboro is as unattainable to them as the future paradise to the unworthy.”

Getting a room at the Islesboro Inn, for example, was a daunting task unless you knew someone. “[T]he patrons …are without exception friends of the cottagers. … People apply for rooms in vain. They are politely informed that every apartment is engaged for the season.” Several dances were held at the hotel each summer when “cottagers array themselves gorgeously and revel in the absence of the society reporters and uncongenial onlookers.”

Even getting off the boat at Dark Harbor, the island’s social epicenter, could be a challenge. “Oftentimes a yacht, attracted by Islesboro’s beauty, drops anchor within the aristocratic confines of Dark Harbor and sends a boat ashore. At the wharf an attache of the island greets the arrivals with the intelligence: ‘This is a private landing. Unless you are a friend of the cottagers you cannot come on shore.'”

Of course, this Boston reporter was exaggerating things a bit. The true story was sketched succinctly in a local story in the Commercial two years later, on June 20, 1908. The Boston reporter was writing primarily about Dark Harbor on the southern end of the island, and had missed the whole north end.

Bangoreans had established their own colonies at two spots years ago. “At Ryder’s Cove and Hughes [Hewes] Point the settlement might well be called a Bangor colony, as Bangor cottage owners predominate. Within the past 25 years Islesboro has been gaining its way into the hearts of the recreation seekers of Bangor until now there are but few summer resorts in which the city sends so large a delegation,” the story said. (Other popular ocean-side destinations for Bangoreans since the growth of train and steamboat service were at Hancock Point, Fort Point, Sandy Point and Castine, but not Bar Harbor. Also popular were several of the lakes around Bangor as well as the Penobscot River especially along the Hampden bank.)

The Islesboro Inn was not the only hotel on the island. The Commercial story of 1908 reported that extensive repairs were being made to the Seaside House at Ryder’s Cove and it would be open in July. Occasionally, the newspapers during these years reported excursion boats leaving Bangor for Hewes Point making it possible for working people to spend a few hours on the island as well.

The commercial reporter included a list of Bangoreans who summered on the island. While their names were not as famous as those at Dark Harbor and their cottages were certainly smaller, many of them were important individuals in the economic life of the Bangor region. They included: Flavius O. Beal, J.F. Crowley, Jason Littlefield, Charles Phillips, Capt. Charles Barbour, C.D. Pressey, C.L. Clark of Hampden, Charles Sawyer, E.A. Adams, Mrs. M.I. Williams, M.M. Hastings, formerly of Bangor, Joseph Thompson, E.G. Adams, Harry Thurston, the Misses Hardy, Mrs. E.E. Lyon, F.L. Tuck, Col. Frank Pullen, Mrs. George Barbour of Brewer, W.R. Frank, L.F. Frank, Maj. W.Z. Clayton, Dr. Dolan, Thomas J. O’Leary, Adolph Pfaff, Walter McDonald, E.E. Rich, John Dunning, John Packard, Charles H. Sinnott and Walter J. Lord.

As for the island’s natives, they were seldom mentioned in the Boston or Bangor press, and were undoubtedly just as happy.

A good source of information on Islesboro’s summer colonies is “The Summer Cottages of Islesboro, 1890-1930” by Earle G. Shettleworth Jr.

wreilly@bangordailynews.net