This land is listed by the Lynam Agency in Bar Harbor.

The land is located in Hulls Cove, a village that is considered part of Bar Harbor, Maine.  It is about +/- 1.75 acres.  There are 260 feet of frontage on the Acadia National Park boundary, 403 feet of water frontage on Breakneck Brook, 378 feet of frontage on Route 3, and the possible building envelope is 11,552 square feet.  The MEDOT has indicated that a driveway may be put into the property well away from the Breakneck Brook.  Both town water, sewer and electric are available at the street.

This piece of land is available in the following price ranges:

1) $185,000.00

2) To a land preservation organization - prevent further development of the land or donate to Acadia National Park (call).

The owner's personal preference is that the land not be developed and be incorporated into the National Park. There is no interest among local land trusts and park preservation groups to incorporate this land into the park, and all inquiries have involved commercial development of the property. The 11,552 square foot buildable portion of the land available is large enough for a small commercial establishment, but could be a rather unsightly intrusion for visitors entering the park in Hulls Cove. No significant opposition exists for commerical development, but the land with it's slope towards Breakneck Stream would lend itself to a creatively designed post & beam residence/workshop that would be a compromise between a commercial development and no development at all. Comments and suggestions about the disposition of this piece of real estate are solicited.

Parcel is marked in yellow on the map below.

Please send inquiries by fax to 207-288-2725 or contact Mr. Brack directly by phone ~ 207-288-5126 during the day E.S.T.
E~mail inquiries may be sent to: curator@davistownmuseum.org (Please put "Land for Sale" in your subject heading.)

Prospective buyers please note: the property is located directly adjacent to Acadia National Park land; due to the sensitive location of this parcel, covenants on the use of the property should be discussed with the current owner.  It is hoped that any future use of the property will be compatible with the adjacent park, its millieu, the traditional architecture of the village, and the year round community of working artists and writers living nearby.

Follow this link to see the official Bar Habor Assessor's map.  Lot 223-10 is in the upper right area of the map.  It shows the required setback from the Breakneck Brook in red.  The Acadia National Park boundary is also in red.  Please note that as indicated on the map above, the assessor's map does not show the boundary correctly.  Read the Project Memo and Project Memo second page (a .pdf format file) to learn more about this boundary error.

You may also read a letter from the Assessing office (.pdf format) estimating the available building envelope.

Background history

The piece of land offered for sale is one of three parcels of the former Brewer Estate, 19th century shipbuilders living in Hulls Cove, Maine, hence the name of the cove, Hulls for ship's hull.  The land was purchased by Harold G. Brack and Suzanne Nash (d. 1999) in 1986 and is still owned by Harold G. Brack.  In 1990, the Geronimo Sculpture Gardens were established on parcel 4 (see map) on the opposite side of Breakneck Brook (1 on map).  In 1999, the Sculpture Gardens became part of the Davistown Museum and are now called the Davistown Museum Hulls Cove Sculpture Gardens.  About 50 sculptures and art assemblages are displayed on +/- two acres.  Parcel 4 will never be developed and will always be part of a non-profit.

The head of the tide for Breakneck Brook and Hulls Cove, located on Frenchman's Bay is approximately 50 feet on the other side of the Route 3 bridge going over the brook.  The brook crosses under the road at 2 on the map and the head of the tide is just a little further down the stream.  Numerous coasting vessels were built by the Brewers and other shipbuilders just below the head of the tide and along the Hulls Cove waterfront, which runs adjacent to Route 3 just north of the Post Office (7) and General Store (8).  One of the photographs shows the view looking north on Route 3 towards the General Store (Exxon sign).  In the opposite direction from the photo of the General Store lies the entrance to the visitor's center of Acadia National Park.

Building 5 is a circa 1840s farmhouse, formerly the Brewer Estate, and now the Brack - Brown residence.  The main office of the Davistown Museum and its Hulls Cove painting gallery and reference library are located within this residence.  Building 6 is the Hulls Cove Tool Barn and greenhouses, and is the shipping and receiving station for all the antique and used hand tools sold at the Tool Barn, the Liberty Tool Co. and Captain Tinkham's Emporium (see photo tour on website).  Building 10 is the home and pottery and painting studios of Rocky Mann and Carol Shutt.

Number 9 represents the Breakneck Road (12) entrance to Acadia National Park.  The park is only open to foot and bicycle traffic on this road; the road was closed to motor vehicles, ATVs and snowmachines a number of years ago.  The Breakneck Road has a long history of several thousand years of use.  In the 19th century it was the main road from Hulls Cove to Northeast Harbor.  Three quarters of a mile into the park the road crosses the Breakneck Brook and runs up a hill.  Numerous wagon accidents occurred on this hill, hence the name "break neck brook"; also hence the name Breakneck Valley on old postcards.  A number of rusticators built estates in the area near the Breakneck hill; when the Rockerfellers deeded their land to the National Park, all vestiges of these estates were removed and the area for the next 10 miles from the entrance to the park (9) appears to be wilderness even though it was once farmed, logged and had several residences.  Two miles down the Breakneck Road, past Breakneck Pond, lies Eagle Lake and almost 200 miles of hiking and biking trails.  Seal Harbor Beach is about a 10 mile hike from Hulls Cove, all of which lies within the National Park.

Hulls Cove lies on Frenchmans Bay, so named because of extensive French fur trading efforts in the area, which began sometime after 1535 (Cartier's voyage down the St. Lawrence).  The Breakneck Brook was the most accessible and sheltered year-round fresh water supply on Frenchmans Bay for French traders, Champlain and other explorers, English man-o-war, privateers and 19th century rusticators, all of who landed at Hulls Cove to get fresh water.  In the era before the great pandemic (1617 - 1619) Hulls Cove was a summer fur trading station.  Most fur traders at this point in time were French rather than English.  Numerous French trading posts lie to the east of Hulls Cove and are noted in Hale's History of Bar Harbor.  Hulls Cove was a convenient trading station not only due to the availability of year-round fresh water, but also because for thousands of years indigenous Abenaki trappers, fishermen and families had journeyed down the Union River or the Taunton River to land at Hulls Cove and hike the short distance to the rich shellfish resources at Asticou (Northeast Harbor), and at the head of Somes Sound.  The Hulls Cove archaeological site (14) is a proposed location for future archaeological investigations and is located on parcel 4 in the section closest to Route 3, next to the old Higgins Garage, now a summer art gallery and flower shop.  A service road runs off of Route 3 and into the National Park Visitor's Center parking lot; 15 notes the location of the park service garage, which is visible from the back corner of the lot for sale.

In August, 1604, Samuel de Champlain explored Frenchmans Bay as far as the narrows opposite the Trenton shoreline.  Returning he ran his shallop up on a rock, probably Googin's Ledge near Hadley's Point.  Controversy exists as to the two locations where he landed to repair his shallop spending several nights in a cove under the mountains.  Some contend this was Cromwell's Harbor on the east side of Bar Harbor, but this was not as active a fur trading location as Hulls Cove, which was much more sheltered and the more likely location for Champlain's visit.  Champlain continued his journey to the mouth of the Kennebec River before returning to spend a brutal winter at St. Croix Island.  For more information about Mawooshen, the Native American confederacy of which Hulls Cove was once a part, see the Davistown Museum publication Norumbega Reconsidered.  For a detailed description of the history of Mount Desert Island see Hale's The Story of Bar Harbor and Samuel Eliot Morison's The Story of Mount Desert Island.  In 1693, two French soldiers, Armand de Vignon and Francois Albert, who had betrayed Pierre Le Moyne de Iberville's planned attack on Pemaquid, were tomahawked in front of 120 Native American men, women and children at Hulls Cove under the supervision of Baron de St. Castine and de Iberville who then "slid out of Frenchmans Bay past Ironbound Island".  The last French settler in the area was Madame de Gregoires, who having received as a friend of Lafayette a grant of land for half of Mount Desert Island from the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1786) then began selling off her lands in the late 18th century to the English settlers whose descendents now occupy Mount Desert Island.

The land offered for sale along the edge of the Breakneck Brook lies adjacent to the probable location of the summer encampments of the Native Americans who traded with the French at this location in Frenchmans Bay for almost 150 years and is very close to the location of the historic tomahawking of de Vignon and Albert, as well as to the location of Champlain's likely campsite along the Breakneck Brook in 1604.