Description: John C. Ralph’s Studio has a complicated history. The J.C. Ralph Studio and Store, on Main Street in Southwest Harbor, proclaimed itself, "Eyeglasses and Spectacles - Jeweler and Optician." "Jeweler John C. Ralph moved from Bar Harbor to Southwest Harbor in 1888 to open a jewelry window in J.T.R. Freeman's store. Over the course of his 22-year tenure in Southwest Harbor, this ambitious man established many businesses...As described in the newspaper, Ralph never walked when he could run." -“Mount Desert Island - Somesville, Southwest Harbor, and Northeast Harbor” by Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. and Lydia B. Vandenbergh - Images of America Series, p. 57 – 2001. “John D. Lurvey purchased the lot and built thereon a small building which he used as a storehouse for coffins which he made, as he was a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker. Later this building was used as a public library and was twice moved; once to the northern end of the lot and again to the place now occupied by the Lawton Variety store, where it was used as a drug store, a jeweler’s store, a barber shop and the post office. John C. Ralph kept the post office there and enlarged the building.” - “Traditions and Records of Southwest Harbor and Somesville, Mount Desert Island, Maine” by Mrs. Seth S. Thornton, p. 148 – 1938. [show more]
Description: Dr. Lemont’s first Drug Store was on the second floor of the large barn of Deacon Henry Higgins Clark’s original house. The house was by that time the Island House Hotel before it was greatly enlarged in 1885.
Description: Started as a contracting business in 1949, Archie McEachern bought out his uncle Jasper Hutchins in 1957 and transitioned the business to a lumber and hardware supply. The store expanded to multiple locations and was taken over by Archie's son, Les.
Description: The business started when Jimmy moved an old building he had been using to house chickens from his property on Clark Point Road, to the end of Clark Point and began to sell lobsters from it. He then expanded it in to a lunch room and installed gas pumps out front.
Description: In 1914 Jesse Newell Mills and his sister, Cora Enola Mills opened a hardware and grocery store, the J.N. Mills Cash Store, on Clark Point in the second old Clark & Parker store at 172 Clark Point Road, Southwest Harbor, Maine across the road from what would later be the site of the J.N. Mills Co., Inc. fuel oil business.
Description: Rich & Grindle Boatbuilders was founded in December 1946 when Roger Clifton Rich (1913-1996) and Ralph Merrill Grindle (1915-2005) formed a partnership to build boats in Roger's barn at Tracy Cove on Clark Point Road. The barn was next to Roger's house at 50 Clark Point Road.
Description: The Gilley and Salisbury plumbing shop was at first built by George H. Gilley on his lot near his home on the Main Road and was used there as a plumber's shop for some years. Then it was moved to its present situation and in 1929 it was moved to the rear of the lot and the show rooms and upstairs living apartment were built. Mr. Gilley's grandson, Wendell H. Gilley, now carried on the business. Gilley Plumbing was a part of the Gilley family for at least three generations. Maud Holmes Gilley ran the business with her son Wendell after the death of her husband, Frank Gilley, in 1920. [show more]
Description: In the 21st Century we may think of ice as something that comes out of the doors of our refrigerator or a nice skating surface in an indoor rink, but, in the 18th and early 19th centuries the ice business produced a very necessary product and employed many people. See: “Ice Harvesting Sampler” DVD, produced by Northeast Historic Film, Black & White, NTSC, 33 minutes - 1994. This “compilation of newsreel and amateur footage of ice harvesting operations in Maine includes ice-house interiors with massive ice blocks being maneuvered at high speed, and horse teams delivering ice to brownstones in Boston.” “America’s Icemen: An Illustrative History of the United States Natural Ice Industry 1665-1925” by Joseph C. Jones Jr., published by Jobeco Books, 1984. “The American Ice Harvests: A Historical Study in Technology, 1800-1918” by Richard O. Cummings, published by the University of Calfornia Press, 1949. [show more]
Description: Fred Mayo holding a wooden ice cream bucket. The building at the far right is the James A. Freeman House (the Inn at Southwest Harbor as of 2016).