Mount Desert Island Historical Society

The Sound Schoolhouse, opened in 1892 for children of the quarrying and farming village of Somes Sound, now houses the society's staff offices. The Somesville Museum sits alongside the 1780 Selectmen's Building and its gardens. Together they anchor a historical society that documents the island's human story — at least 6,000 years of Indigenous habitation, French missionaries, granite quarrymen, and Gilded Age estates — through rotating exhibits, an annual history journal called *Chebacco*, and a research room open to members year-round.