SIEUR DE MONTS NATIONAL MONUMENT 

 George Bucknam Dorr. 

 Custodian. 



The time is fast coming when National Parks and Forest 

 Reservations, places of beauty and refreshment within occasion- 

 al reach by all, will be recognized as fundamental needs, needs 

 of the people, in our national life. The West, aided by the 

 Government's great ownership of lands, has led the way in 

 this and shown its foresight. In the East, where gifts of land 

 or purchases by the Government were necessary, the need has 

 been longer in obtaining recognition, the first step toward 

 meeting it by the establishment of a purely recreative area 

 under the National Park Service being taken by the Secretary 

 of the Interior last July, in recommending to the President 

 the acceptance of the Sieur de Monts National Monument. 



This area, not a purchase by the Government but a gift 

 from citizens, includes the mountainous and finest landscape 

 portion of Mount Desert Island on the coast of Maine, whose 

 crowning glory in a resort and scenic sense that island is and 

 has been for the last half century. 



Technically termed a Monument because created by the 

 President and Secretary of the Interior under the authority 

 given them by the so-called Monuments Act of 1906 and 

 because of its historic interest, it is by nature, beauty, and 

 resort importance a true National Park in every popular 

 sense and destined when developed to become one of the most 

 widely visited and recreationally useful park areas on the 

 continent. 



It cannot long stand alone in the East; the human need for 

 such areas of refreshment within reach of our great eastern 

 cities and those of the fast-crowding lake and Mississippi 

 regions is too serious for that. But it will in all likelihood 

 remain unique forever as the one national park — using the 



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