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Article snippet: BAR HARBOR, Me. — Residents of this scenic coastal town have struggled for the last several years with a conundrum familiar to anyone living in a beautiful place that attracts tourists: How do you maintain its essence when crowds threaten the very qualities they come to enjoy? Since the late 1990s, Bar Harbor has been a popular port of call for cruise ships. Much of the attraction is nearby Acadia National Park, where deep evergreen forests meet the craggy, glacier-sculpted coast of the Atlantic and where Cadillac Mountain, the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, offers spectacular views. But in recent years, the number of cruise ships has sharply escalated, aggravating tensions between residents whose livelihoods depend on tourists — and want to cater to the cruise ships — and others who may or may not depend on tourists but who worry that too many could spoil what draws people here in the first place. “We don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” one town resident said at a packed meeting last month on the issue. “But the goose is already sick.” Outsiders have been flocking to Mount Desert Island, home to Bar Harbor and the national park, since the mid-1800s, when painters from the Hudson River School discovered its natural beauty. Rockefellers, Astors, Vanderbilts and Carnegies homesteaded here in Gilded Age style, building mammoth 1,000-room hotels and opulent “cottages.” Much of that fell to ruin in 1947 when a fire roared across the isla... Link to the full article to read more