It's ACADIA, not ARCADIA

You can usually tell a first time visitor to the Mount Desert Island when they says ARCADIA instead of ACADIA. Drop the "R" please. The arcade is where you got to play video games. Acadia is a National Park named for historic reasons.

Acadia probably stems from a name given to the area by the explorer, Giovanni Verrazano, when he sailed by in 1524. The shoreline reminded him of a part of Greece named Arcadia - but unless you are a time traveler drop the "r" please.

Did ya know?

Cajuns down in New Orleans are the descendants of the Acadians, the French peasant settlers of Nova Scotia (then known as Acadia/Acadie) in the 1600s and 1700s. The French and British warred regularly over control of Acadia; the final settlement came in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht, which gave the land to the Brits.

Eventually, a group of Acadians, led by the Joseph "Beausoleil" Broussard -- who had led the armed resistance to the Brits back in Nova Scotia -- negotiated with the Spanish government to allow Acadians to resettle in the Louisiana territory it had recently obtained from the French. The Spanish agreed, and word went out to Acadians around the world to head for Louisiana.

The word "Acadian" (ah-cah-DYANH) over time became "Cadian" (cah-DYANH) and "Cajun" (cah-JHAN), as a series of Anglos mispronounced it.