Description/Human History

             Kineo has captured the attention of human inhabitants in the region since they first started arriving about 11,000 years ago.  A major attraction was the Kineo rhyolite, a flint like blue-gray rock with small quartz crystals that could be shaped into spear points, knives, axes, and other tools.  Artifacts made of Kineo rhyolite have been founding hundreds of locations in Maine and at sites as far a field as Martha’s Vineyard and Nova Scotia.  In 1901, C.C. Willoughby described four prehistoric sites located on the talus below the Kineo cliff that were used as workshops for rough cutting the fallen and fractured stone.  (Willoughby 1901).  W.K. Morehead visited Moosehead Lake in 1912 and excavated in the talus at Kineo and at the cemetery of the Red Paint People nearby (Hamelton et al.  1984; Bourque 2001).  Following Morehead, professional archaeological exploration at Moosehead Lake lapsed until the summer of 1976 when R. Bonnichsen visited Kineo to study lithic source materials. As a result of these and subsequent visits, five separate prehistoric workshop sites are now known from the property, both at lake level along the shore and beneath the cliff itself (Spiess 2003). Parts of these sites have since been submerged due to increases in the level at Moosehead Lake caused by construction of the east and west outlet dams, but future discoveries may reignite interest in the significance of the area.

            With the settlement of the Greenville area in the early 1800’s, tourist visitation to Moosehead Lake and Mt. Kineo became a practical possibility.  Steam transport, initiated on the Lake in 1846 to support logging, was quickly adopted as a mode of transport by visitors as well.  Henry David Thoreau visited Kineo in 1853 and again in 1857 at which time he climbed the mountain and remarked on the “glorious wild view… of the broad lake with its fluctuating surface and numerous forest-clad islands…and the boundless forest undulating away from the shores at every side…” (Thoreau 1864).  The first Mt. Kineo house was a tavern built on the Kineo peninsula in 1844 but it was soon expanded into a hotel.  Fires destroyed this and a subsequent building in 1868 and 1882, but a large and elegant replacement hotel was built in 1884.  At its heyday in the early 1900s, the Mt. Kineo House could accommodate over 500 guests with well-equipped guest rooms, a large dining room, and a 9-hole golf course, 4 holes of which made use of the field that is now a prominent feature of Kineo Sanctuary (McKeil 2003).  With the rise of the automobile and the decline of railroads and the steam transport in the 1930s, the glory days of the great hotel passed and it was sold in 1938 (Fobes 1967; Harris 2002).  All that remains now of the old resort is a dormitory built in 1909, several cabins used as private residences, and the golf course.

            The 800 acres (324 has) comprising the northern portion of the Kineo peninsula were acquired by the state in 1990 using monies from the Land for Maine’s Future program and are managed as state park lands (Bureau of Parks and Lands 1997).  The Kineo Sanctuary property was acquired by Burt’s Bees, Inc from Charles (Chip) Foster of Rockwood in 2001, and is now held for conservation by EPI.