Bar Island

Yes, there really is a bar in Bar Harbor, and no, it’s not the kind you are thinking of. When the tide recedes, it’s possible to walk out to Bar Island in the middle of Frenchmen’s Bay. Just be sure not to linger, lest the tide strand you for the next twelve hours (the bar is exposed for three to four hours at a time).

Abbe Museum

Few traces remain of Maine’s first inhabitants, the Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawn.” What artifacts remain have been gathered at the Abbe Museum (26 Mount Desert St., 207/288-3519, www.abbemuseum.org, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. daily late May–early Nov.; 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Thu.–Sat. early Nov.–late May, $6 adults, $2 children 6–15, free children under 6 and Native Americans) a comprehensive and sensitively curated museum of Native American culture. Far from just a happy homage to the “noble savage,” the museum both celebrates Native culture and complicates it with moving exhibits of the persecution and prejudice faced by Native peoples in New England.

Bar Harbor Historical Society

Photographs of the well-to-do frolicking during Bar Harbor’s Victorian heyday are on display at the Bar Harbor Historical Society (33 Ledgelawn Ave., 207/288-3807, www.barharborhistorical.org, 1–4 p.m. Mon.–Sat. June–Oct.; open by appt. in winter, free), founded just a year before the Great Fire of 1947. A Step Back In Time (207/288-9605, $12) offers tours through town by costumed guides to the few Gilded Age cottages left standing after the conflagration.

Mount Desert Island Tours

For a more hands- (and feet-)on view of history, take a walking tour of downtown Bar Harbor with Mount Desert Island Tours (207/460-1682, www.mditours.com), which takes in the Gilded Age cottages that survived the fire with several different themed tours every summer, and also customizes tours for groups.

Mount Desert Oceanarium

Learn all about lobsters at the Mount Desert Oceanarium (1351 Rte. 3, 207/288-5005, www.theoceanarium.com, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Mon.–Sat. mid-May–late Oct., $15 adults, $10 children), a bayside nature center with lobster museum and hatchery, live seals, and marsh trails.