There was a brief period when it seemed Mount Desert would again become a center of French activity. In 1688, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, an ambitious young man who had immigrated to New France and bestowed upon himself the title sieur de Cadillac, asked for and received of land along the Maine coast, including all of Mount Desert. Cadillac's hopes of establishing a feudal estate in the New World, however, were short-lived. Although he and his bride resided here for a time, they soon abandoned their enterprise. Cadillac later gained lasting recognition as the founder of Detroit. The island's highest point, at the highest point on the eastern seaboard of the United States, bears the name Cadillac Mountain, and is notable for the fact that its summit is among the first points in the United States touched by the rays of the rising sun.