Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Mount Desert or Mount Dessert?
An ongoing debate rages concerning the proper pronunciation for
Mount Desert Island. Is it Mount Desert or Mount Dessert? The
question of this island's pronunciation and its answer have been
tossed around, probably since 1604, when French explorer Sam-
uel de Champlain named it.
“The island,” Champlain wrote, “is very high, and cleft into seven
or eight mountains, all in a line. The summits of most of them are
bare of trees, nothing but rock. I named it l'Isle des Monts
Deserts” (island of bare mountains). Since then, people have
been unable to agree whether we should be saying Mount Desert,
as in the arid wasteland, or Mount Dessert, as in the tasty epilog
to a good meal. Old maps are inconclusive.
One school says even though Dessert is probably an Anglicized
version of the original French, it is closer to the original than
Desert. Another school says Champlain indicated the mountain-
tops were bare like deserts and we must call a desert a desert.
Still other folks say Mount Desert Island and in the same breath
call it the Island of Mount Dessert.
Bangor is another name the pronunciation of which seems to confound
folks. Some say “Bang-gah,” others “Bang-ger,” but the correct way is
“Bang-gor,” so that the last syllable rhymes with door.
Place Numbers
You know you may not be at the end of the world but you might have a
chance of seeing it from a place where folks run out of names and resort to
numbers. These wilderness areas are broken down into townships, “T,”
and ranges, represented by an “R.” Hence the designation T2-R11. Some
explorers will find brightly painted posts with the letters and numbers at
key road, river, crossing and at township line junctions. They are very
useful for navigation purposes in areas with few landmarks.
The letters WELS are added to some townships and stand for West of the
East Line Survey or West of the Easterly Line of the State. Other groups
of letters are used to help reduce confusion over townships of similar
number.
