FOURTH OF JULY PUTS THE FUN BACK INTO COMMUNITY
BAR HARBOR—The Independence Day parade hadn’t even started yet, and the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce’s Director of Operations & Finance Chris Graten, clipboard in hand, had already clocked 12,000 steps.
“It’s good! It’s all good!” he said as he surveyed the parade floats and marchers lined up along side streets in downtown Bar Harbor and waiting for the parade to begin. “It’s fun.”
For most attending, fun was the theme of this year’s Independence Day celebrations. Dogs licked ice cream cones. A giant soccer ball flitted through the sky. Stevie Gilbert surprised the parade crowd leaping over his friends while on roller blades. Out on the bar, children explored, friends strolled. Smokey Bear achieved celebrity status as he rode. But so did others who weren’t in costumes.
It was a day where neighbors and strangers cheered for each other, where people who had left home and come back cheered on their friends and family.
“I only see you at the parade!” one woman yelled.
There was joy here. And though the Bar Harbor community of roughly 5,000 is often decried for its current lawsuits or its us-vs-them mentality when it comes to local politics, that didn’t matter quite so much as everyone celebrated community and each other.
Early on Thursday morning, the Fourth of July celebrations filled the streets, fields, parks, and an occasional front yard in Bar Harbor.
The yearly celebration is made possible by the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club of Bar Harbor (MDI) and a plethora of business sponsors and volunteers.
BREAKFAST
“Are you a local?” the woman garbed in all red, white, and blue asked the man sitting nearby at a table covered with a red checkered tablecloth.
“I am. I am,” he said, nodding as he spoke, pancakes waiting in front of him.
She sucked in her breath. “Oh, you are so lucky.”
“I am. I am,” he agreed.
“Well, thank you for sharing your town and your pancakes with us,” she responded. “Eat. Eat.”
It was a conversation repeated at table after table: where are you from, what’s it like to live here, how are your pancakes? Each sentence a tiny entreaty toward community, neighborliness no matter how far from each other people’s actual homes or beliefs are.
The pancake breakfast on the town’s ball fields begins well before its 6 a.m. start time even if you don’t include the planning and set up that began months before.
The Fourth is a community effort and each event that comprise the day requires community members to participate, fund, volunteer, and enjoy. For Rotary’s events, the community continues to benefit long after the holiday.
The proceeds from this and for the seafood festival later in the day all go to the Rotary club’s projects and also to donations to local organizations.
“It’s going well,” club member Colleen Maynard said later in the day. “People seem happy.”
Each year the 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.
THE CRAFT FAIR!
The Island Arts Association, which has monthly events in the summer and fall, organize the craft fair, which takes place in the MDI YMCA parking lot every Independence Day.
THE PARADE
The parade, organized by the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, began on Main Street and headed out and into downtown proper to packed sidewalks and streets. Chris Popper was the event’s grand marshal, riding in a car from Seal Cove Auto Museum. It had to be a change of pace for the director of sports programming and senior account executive at Townsquare Media, who typically spends his time photographing the event and memorializing it for others.
This year’s parade had a surprise engagement when the Mount Desert Island Nursing Association unfurled a large banner off its float, towed by Acadia Towing. It read, “Bella, will you marry me?”
Larry Palumbo went down on one knee and proposed to his love, Barbara “Bella” Dillon, who grew up on Mount Desert Island and comes back every Fourth of July. It’s her favorite holiday. It’s easy to see why.
SEAFOOD FESTIVAL
The Bar Harbor (MDI) Rotary Club, just around 30 members strong, also hosted and organized the Seafood Festival. The club received help from Rotary District Governor Dino Marzaro who joined from Quebec, Ellsworth Rotary clubs, and numerous agencies, friends and family. And they sold out almost everything.
MUSIC AND CLAIMING SPACES
A day progressed, Rotary broke down its event, bringing supplies back into the old Bangor-Hydro (now Versant) building. Others staked claims on Agamont Park for fireworks or to listen to the music down at the parking lot, checked out the Shore Path and the town beach. Steve Lambert provided sound for the three bands that rocked the town pier: The Smith Collaboration, Cryin’ Out Loud, and the Crown Vics. The performances were sponsored by the Bar Harbor Hospitality Group.
Hundreds took advantage of low tide and headed out to the sand bar. Others kayaked or ate ice cream and pizza on the benches along Main Street.
FIREWORKS
This year, people began claiming spots on the slopping green of Agamont Park just above the town pier before the morning parade even began. Others found slightly more isolated places to watch the display.
Walking through Bar Harbor just before 9 p.m., the town can feel like a bit of a ghost town. And then at the town pier suddenly people are everywhere. The town blocks off the bottom of Main Street and it’s obvious where the approximately 25,000 people Bar Harbor hosts each year have gathered. To put that in context, Bar Harbor has about 5,000 year-round residents.
People fill the beach area (depending on the tide), the area around the Bar Harbor Inn, and the beginning of the Shore Path before thinning out to smaller groups up along Main Street, behind the banks, or even on the Village Green.
The fireworks event has been consistently organized by the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce with support and help from other businesses and groups. This year the day was brought to Bar Harbor by the Chamber, the Bar Harbor Hospitality Group, The First National Bank, Harborside Hotel, Bar Harbor Regency, Stewman’s, Bar Harbor Whale Watch, MDI YMCA, and the Rotary Club of Bar Harbor (MDI).
LINKS
For a gallery of photos from past years
Our Facebook page with a lot of photos from this year.
Unless otherwise specified, all photos Carrie Jones and Shan Farrar/Bar Harbor Story
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Thank you for publishing the pics of the Suffragists - we were trying to raise awareness of the threat to women's as well as ALLof our rights and the very real threat of Project 2025.