In the late 1800s, steamship and train travel helped summer tourism reach its peak in Sullivan, with steamships ferrying passengers between trains to and from Boston, New York, Portland, Bar Harbor, and DownEast. The Waukeag House, built in 1877 and operating until 1900, stood nearby as a sixty-room summer hotel furnished in good style, kept in a first-class manner, with spacious piazzas six hundred fifty feet around the hotel and running water. Within a few decades, however, the rise of the automobile and better roads to Bar Harbor, along with the closing of mines and quarries, brought gradual economic decline and population loss to Sullivan. In 1895, the Sullivan Harbor Land Company, which had hoped to subdivide and develop the area and draw visitors away from Bar Harbor, ran into financial difficulties and abandoned its plans. In the 21st century, demand for summer residences and regional growth have helped the local economy rebound once again.