Today, everyone is familiar with Bar Harbor’s success as a thriving community and popular tourist destination. Less well known is the fact that, in 1896, the Petit Manan Land Company tried to create the same kind of successful community across the bay in Steuben.

The company invested money into building roads, a clubhouse, casino, steamboat dock, icehouse, lumber shed, a boarding house and cottages. Over the next 60 years, plans were filed by numerous individuals and companies who tried unsuccessfully to sell the nearly 1,300 cottage lots and build hotels and other amenities.