Thursday, April 27, 2017

THE STONE TOWER




EAGLE LAKE - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
THE STONE TOWER
The Stone Tower of Eagle Lake is part of the remains of the old Bar Harbor Water Company, the tower itself being a standpipe.  The tower itself is constructed entirely of large flat field stones stacked up on top of each other, forming a tower.  While you can enter the tower, the inside is not large at all and looking up you get the same feeling as if you were in a well looking upward.

Off in the woods to the right, before you reach the Stone Tower, are a couple of enormous foundations which were once part of the Bar Harbor Water Company sand filtering system, in one far corner of one of the foundations you can still find a pipe entering the foundation from nearby Duck Brook.

THE STONE TOWER - Acadia National Park
Even though the structure is actually at the base of Brewer Mountain, it is a short walk from the Eagle Lake boat landing and very easy to locate, see the directions  below.



1.  Approach one is the easiest by far, drive along the Eagle Lake Road - route 233, from Bar Harbor and watch for a narrow paved road just before the lake on the right, with the DUCK BROOK street sign, park at the corner.  Walk down the Eagle Lake Road, in the direction of the lake on the right hand side of the road, you want to cross that small bridge, and just past the bridge you will see an old dirt road entering the woods, follow that road until you come to the Stone Tower in a small field - this is all on Park Property.


OLD ROAD LEADING TO STONE TOWER
2.  From the Eagle Lake boat Landing, take the carriage road to the left, follow it a short ways where you will come to a intersection just before a wooden bridge.  Go left, this will take you to the Eagle Lake road, the old dirt road will be across the roadway, to the left of the small bridge along the Eagle Lake Road.





Just a little update, today we returned back to the old Stone tower and this time around we followed the large water pipe leading from in front of the stone tower  through the woods to the fast moving waters of Duck Brook.  Just before the brook we found an interesting find, see photo.
underground tank

From that point we decided to follow the brook for a ways, which ended up being a good choice, as you will see.  We took video and photos of the brook as we went, but soon had to turn back and retrace our way back to the stone tower.  I remembered an old road behind the tower, and it is well hidden behind some pines.  We followed that road, which stays pretty close to the waters of Duck Brook, until we came to out next big find.  Here we came upon a large water pipe line that suddenly swung out from the side of the old road and crossed the brook, as you can see from the photos, it was a pretty amazing find.




DUCK BROOK - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

Just beyond this, the road ended at a swamp, so we turned back around and headed back past the stone tower and out toward route 233 (The Eagle Lake Road).  Just before the main road we decided to get a few more photos of the huge foundations that were once part of a sand filtering system.  It seems every time I visit this area I come away with another new discovery.  Oh, and we made a huge blunder, we forgot to bring along a can of deet and the deadly Maine black flies lived up to their reputation, our arms, necks and foreheads were covered with black flies.


part of the sand filtering system

part of the sand filtering foundation

THE STONE TOWER - EAGLE LAKE - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK


THE STONE TOWER GPS NUMBERS

pull-over at corner of Duck Brook Rd.
latitude            44 22'39"N
longitude         68 14' 41"W

dirt road to tower begins
latitude           44 22' 39"N
longitude         68 14' 46"W

The Stone Tower
latitude            44 22' 45"N
longitude          68 14' 43"W

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