LOWER SECTION OF GREEN MOUNTAIN RAILROAD PATH LOCATED

Hope everyone had a great and safe Christmas.  So what is there to do after opening gifts and setting down to a Christmas dinner with all the fixings? Heading into the park to search out another abandoned trail, of course. We decided to go for the abandoned Toll House road but once in the area we couldn't locate any signs of it, so decided to shoot for a trail we have been searching for for years now, the lower section of the Green Mountain Railroad Trail..

Abandoned Trails of Acadia - Green Mountain Railroad

We began by a  pull over and made our way down the hillside when we came to a deep gully.  My son took one side of the gully and I took the other and we criss crossed the woods, meeting back up at the gully.  I told my son it was odd that this gully was here and wondered if maybe the train had passed up through the gully.  My son went down into the gully and sure enough he called out that he had found several railroad spikes sticking up out of the granite - finally we had located the bottom section of the pathway.

One reason it had been so hard to find for so long is that it appears someone had tossed branches and fallen tree's into the gully - as a way to help conceal it.  We have seen this many times with other abandoned trails, but once we were past that section we could easily get down into the gully and follow it.

 VIDEO OF THE GREEN MOUNTAIN RAILROAD TRAIL - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

At one point I went back up the side and found a tree trunk that had been cut down by a chain saw with "U M 15" carved deeply into it.  Clearly the guy with the chain saw wanted to leave behind some sort of memory and I am pretty certain if anyone else had done that they would of been looking at charges of defacing park property.

From there we continued to follow the gully downward, the further we went the closer the gully came to the fast moving stream to our right.  Before long the gully ended as did the railroad spikes, and we could see the stream to our right with a small water fall and straight ahead we could see the Eagle Lake Carriage road.  We took a fw photos of the stream than walked to the carriage road and began searching on the other side from the carriage road to the lake but could not find any more railroad spikes.

WATERFALLS - GREEN MOUNTAIN RAILROAD TRAIL - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

You can not see the gully from the Eagle Lake carriage road, nor can you see the gully from the Park loop road.

Green Mountain Railroad Trail -Acadia National Park

So here are the instructions - drive along the park loop road past the Cadillac Summit road, and continue past the first pull over on the right.  Stop at the second pull over on the right, and at the beginning of the pull over count seven stones in, which will bring you pretty much to the center of the parking lot.

    Directly below that seventh stone is a large tree, and just below that in the woods is the sdeep gully.  As stated above, the start of the gully has had brush and sections of tree's tossed into it.

The other section of the Green Mountain Railroad trail  is directly across the roadway from that seventh stone, just a short ways in the woods look for the first spike and/or rock pile, the path the train took is also somewhat worn - see my write up on the Green mountain Railroad trail for map and instructions on that upper section.
So this ended up being a pretty good find for us, though I did manage to sprain an ankle as we made our way back toward the Park Loop Road.

EAGLE LAKE WATERFALLS - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

We now know the exact route the train tracks took, they begun by the edge of the lake, along a thin strip of land that extends out onto the lake.  The tracks than passed along the left hand side of the brook, crossing the brook by way of a crib just below this small waterfall.  The train than made its way up along a shallow gully until it reached the area where the present day Park Loop Road is, where it continued up the mountain side.
When the tracks were laid along that narrow strip of land there were no trees or brush on it as there is today.

On this old map you can clearly see how the tracks extended out onto that narrow strip of land which is a short ways from the wooden bridge and the brook. 

HISTORY OF THE GREEN MOUNTAIN RAILROAD

EAGLE LAKE - GREEN MOUNTAIN RAILWAY -
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

GREEN MOUNTAIN
RAILROAD TRAIL
(Lower Section)

Wooden Bridge by Lake
latitude     44 21' 32"N
longitude   68 14' 42"W
Shallow Gully begins
latitude     44 21' 33"N
longitude  68 14' 39"W
half way point
latitude     44 21' 33"N
longitude   68 14' 35"W
Pull Over
latitude     44 21' 33"N
longitude   68 14' 29"W