Building a Parade, Feeding More Than a Town:
With Floats, Food, and Fireworks: Mount Desert Island Pulls Off Another Memorable Fourth
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The 1932 Criterion Theatre.
BAR HARBOR—Sometimes it takes an entire community to prepare for a holiday and the Independence Day celebrations on Mount Desert Island are no exception.
The effort begins well before the actual the day.
Floats are designed. Should it feature Mary Poppins to represent kids taken care of by a crew led by a woman who is part magic? Should it feature stuffed animals on a steel girder to represent the building of a school? Should it have bubbles? How much candy is needed? Does anyone want to put on a lobster suit and dance? Volunteers make decision after decision and then recruit and motivate others to join them marching down a parade route filled with other humans, laughing, cheering, and waving.
It’s not just the planning on the individual float level. Restaurants tweak menus for Fourth of July items, or like Sassafras, the Travelin’ Lobster, and Atlantic Brewing Midtown, create entire events. Police and fire departments go over standard operating procedures and protocols for the parade and fireworks.
Then it’s the chamber of commerce efforts: Acadia Chamber and Bar Harbor Chamber plan for fireworks and events, gathering donations from area businesses to help light up the sky.
The Bar Harbor (MDI) Rotary Club plans and recruits and gathers its supplies and volunteers to feed hundreds, all to raise money for local nonprofits. The club members set up the day before, putting out tents, tables, double checking supplies.
And that’s just the beginning.
On the morning of the Fourth, on the side streets of Bar Harbor as others have breakfast with Rotarians, people assemble floats, gather kids, carry clipboards. Trucks stop in the middle of the street as neighbors lean out windows, smiling.
This is Mount Desert Island, year after year.
There would be no celebrations without the businesses and without the people who live here and work here. It wouldn’t be half the celebration that it becomes without the people who visit here, too.
Memories are made.
A child sits in a fire truck. A woman tries her first lobster roll even though she’s lived in Maine her entire life. Last year, there was a proposal right on the parade route.
“Cutest. Parade. Ever!” a child yelled, skipping down the sidewalk of lower Main Street.
“So. Much. Candy!” said her companion, lollipop in hand.
“This is amazing,” one man, visiting from New Hampshire, said after the parade, walking in a group of three up First South Street.
“There was politics, but no politicians,” the woman said, walking next to him. “Wild. That’s wild.”
“That’s what it’s all about,” he said.
On the side streets of Bar Harbor neighbors climbed out to their porches. They smiled. They honked horns. Some people searched for parking spaces. Some cars on Bridge Street parked in a yellow zone were towed away. Others were, too.
On Ledgelawn Avenue people gathered on lawns. Under hotel awnings, workers gathered to watch. Some people caught up in driveways before heading out to Otter Creek to fire up their grills.
Stories happened everywhere because people happened everywhere.
At the ball field, faces were painted, corn hole boards were climbed over. A child danced alone in a circle by the Seal Cove Auto Museum cars. Across the street at the MDI YMCA parking lot, craftspeople sold their creations. At the Kogod Center on the Mount Desert Island Hospital campus, volunteers from the MDI Hospital Women’s Auxiliary sold jewelry.
For most attending, fun was the theme of this year’s Independence Day celebrations. For some there was a side of drunkenness. For some it was about a long day of work.
Dogs licked ice cream cones. A giant soccer ball flitted through the sky. Stevie Gilbert surprised the parade crowd by leaping over his friends while on roller blades. Again. Out on the bar, children explored, friends strolled. Smokey Bear achieved celebrity status as he rode through town. But so did others who weren’t in costumes. One dog in an Acadia Gem was happily mobbed during the parade route.
There were political signs and messages interspersed throughout other floats. There were firetrucks and police cars and the incredible search and rescue team. There was a women veteran promoting awareness of her nonprofit, focused on mental health for women veterans like herself.
There was a float to help raise funds for the Conners Emerson School’s rebuild and the Jesup Memorial Library had a presence again. And so did Kids’ Corner, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary!
On the parade route, candy was thrown and plucked out of puppies’ mouths. People took photo after photo and hollered their friends’ names joyfully when they spotted them in a car or riding on a float or walking down the street.
The parade is always something beautiful and something hopeful.
Each year the Bar Harbor (MDI) Rotary club gives thousands to local nonprofits, helping support their missions while also supporting their own. This year, calls for volunteers to help the small club pull off the massive event extended through the weekend. Ellsworth Rotarians and others came volunteering, manning sausage grills, flipping pancakes, setting up, cleaning tables, making coffee, even guarding the equipment overnight.
Some were recovering from strokes, from PTSD, from cancer. They spent hours setting up, serving, tearing down.
Why? Because Rotary’s motto is a simple one meant to be lived: service above self.
Timber Tina and her crew from the Great Maine Lumberjack Show hosted axe throwing and showed off their own skills.
They chopped. They sawed. They threw axes from 1 to 3 p.m. in Agamont Park and for every person who took a chance at throwing an axe for $5, the money went to Acadia Youth Sports. It’s the Great Maine Lumberjack Show’s 30th anniversary this year. They are based in Trenton on Route 3/the Bar Harbor Road.
For most, the night ended with fireworks in both Southwest Harbor and Bar Harbor. For some restaurant and bar workers it ended after that. For the dispatchers, fire and ambulance crews, and law enforcement officers in the island towns and Acadia National Park it continued with traffic control and emergency calls.
And it will continue today, July 5, too.
Tonight, the Criterion Theatre on Cottage Street officially celebrates its grand reopening with the Mother Hips. The show begins at 8 p.m. with a special pre-event beginning at 6 for ticket holders.
The Travelin’ Lobster will host karaoke, tasty bar bites, and plenty of local fun beginning at 7. It’s located at 1569 State Highway 102 in Bar Harbor.
The Jesup Library on Mount Desert Street hosts dragon appreciation day at 10:30 a.m., so dragons get a shout-out today, too.
Last weekend, Tremont hosted the Backside Blast. Next weekend is Harbor House’s Flamingo Festival in Southwest Harbor and the Abbe Museum’s Dawnland Festival of Arts & Ideas at the College of the Atlantic. There’s a lot going on and a lot of people making everything happen.
That’s the thing about holidays and celebrations and festivals. They are meant to be about celebration and shout-outs, about community and all the elements that go into it, about the remembrances, the art and hope, the history and ideas and connections that come, too.
The Fourth of July celebrates the Second Continental Congress’ unanimous adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It’s about being a nation. In the United States, the nation is made up of states, a federal district, several major territories, and islands. There are even nations—like the Wabanaki Confederacy—within our nation.
And all of those? They are made up of communities.
Unless otherwise specified, all photos Shaun Farrar and Carrie Jones/Bar Harbor Story
LINKS FOR MORE
For a gallery of photos from past years (we are still building it up for this year).
Our Facebook page with a lot of photos from this year.
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Wonderful parade. Wonderful reporting.
So. What's with the miserable little children (on Mt. Desert near Holland) throwing water balloons at marchers? Or actually, what's with their 'grown ups'?