ABANDONED TRAILS OF ACADIA NATIONAL PARK: GREEN MOUNTAIN BUCKBOARD ROAD

To begin with, I am not sure there ever was a road officially named the "Buckboard Road," and it is my belief that when the survey road was replaced with the carriage road by the Green Mountain Carriage Road Company, some people began referring to the carriage road as a Buckboard Road because that is what the company used, buckboards, to carry passengers up and down Green Mountain. The word Buckboard Road doesn't even come up in searches of old newspapers, and to date only one very old map even has the road Buckboard Road written on it.

Green Mountain, today named Cadillac Mountain, stands at 1,532 feet above sea level, making it the second highest summit along the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean. a fact the did not go unnoticed by budding entrepreneurs who saw money to be made and set about to stake out their claims on the Mountain. History gives us few clues as to the exact route the buckboard Road took as it made its way to the summit, we know it began off the Eagle Lake Road, and passed over Great Pond Hill before making its way to the white Cap, before turning and rising upward toward the summit of Green Mountain, but it was not the first road that made its way up to the summit with its majestic views, a Government Survey Road was the first road to do that.

The Survey Road was built in 1853 and was a primitive road at best, but did do its job of providing teams of horses to carry survey equipment and supplies up to the summit of the mountain. In 1866 Daniel Webster Brewer built a hotel on the summit, on land he purchased from his father in 1853, which early records first refer to as the Mountain House, but would later be named the Green Mountain Hotel. Mr. Brewer also built the Buckboard Road, following the government survey road for a ways before separating from it and following a more friendly route to the summit. The Green Mountain Railroad Company was incorporated on November 23, 1882, and on On January 22, 1883, Frank Clergue aquired a 20 year lease for 200 acres along the mountain side.

For its first five years the Green Mountain Railway Company pretty much had
no competition, that changed in 1887 when a new company, the Green Mountain carriage Road Company was formed. Their goal, to compete with the train company in a head to head battle for customers. They decided a new improved road had to be constructed to the summit and the new carriage road was built in just three weeks. This new improved road was two lanes wide so carriages could easily pass one another. The new business was met with anger from the owners of the railroad company who placed a gate across the newly constructed carriage road, charging anyone passing through the gate a fee, but this lasted for only a day, when the Carriage Company workers arrived and tore down the gate. The two companies continued to verbally go at it until one night workers from the railroad company went out under the cover of darkness and placed sticks of dynamite along the Buckboard Road and blew it up. But not long after the carriage Road was once again open for business once repairs were finished.

The carriage Road became the scene of some armed robberies, when an armed robber appeared out of nowhere along the road and held up passengers as they made their way up the mountain side on horse drawn buckboards. The robber was given the nick name The Gentleman Bandit because he would not rob from the women, he only took money and jewelry from the men. He would disappear into the woods without a trace and never was captured despite a reward on his head. At one time there was as much as $5,000 reward placed on his head, yet he was never caught.

Over time the current Cadillac Mountain Summit Road was constructed, with some of the road following sections of the old buckboard Road. A blasting man was killed in a dynamite accident during the building of the current road.

Over the years we believe we located the old government survey road, and recently we believe we may of located a long stretch of the old original carriage Road, veering off of the survey road as described in old articles, and with a wire gate across it in one section, for which we have put up the GPS numbers for. This second road, constructed after the survey road, was said to be a safer route up the mountain side, and articles refer to a wire gate that was placed across the lower section. This wire gate was not the same gate placed on the upper section by the railway company, and one day while walking the old survey road we located the lower gate, which is one long stretch of heavy thick wire which when pulled closed blocked off the carriage road, and had a loop in a large boulder where a lock could prevent the wire gate from being opened.

BUCKBOARD ROADS WIRE GATE
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

GPS for the wire gate - N44 22.403 Wo68 13.973
Just recently we made another pass through the area and sadly the thick heavy wire - or cable, had rusted free of its metal ring.

UPDATE;

This has been a very good week, learning that the old stone foundation in the woods off of West Street Extension, just inside the park, was once a tea house, finding the location of one of the two lost stairways leading up from Duck Brook to the duck Brook Road, and now the discovery of the actual starting point of the old Green Mountain survey road and carriage road, this find helps fill in missing gaps in the route the road took.

To be certain, long sections of the survey road had been documented on my site, but today I decided to walk up along the old abandoned section of the Eagle Lake Road and poke around in the woods one more time. The park service in recent years extended the start of the Cadillac Mountain North Ridge Trail so that it now begins close to its original location, with a bus stop at the start of the new section of trail, but a short ways before the trail is a section of ledge and just beyond the ledge is an old road which I documented years ago came out onto the One Way Section of the Park Loop Road. If you cross the Park Loop road you will find a well worn path running straight into the woods, but it suddenly ends and it has baffled me for years. This evening as I was coming back out of the woods I looked to my left and saw the light hit the forest floor a bit oddly and went down the banking to check it out and there it was, as soon as you enter the woods you do not want to follow the well worn path straight, instead as soon as you climb up the banking by the road, turn right, you will see a large square granite brook and the road begins there, running down through the woods at an angle almost parallel with the one way section of the Park Loop Road. This discovery also answers another question, where was the Toll House located? Old articles give the location of the Toll House as being where the Green Mountain Carriage Road and Green Mountain North Ridge Trail connected, making it easier to collect tolls, and the only place where those two connected was along the old abandoned section of the Eagle Lake Road, the old survey road began on one side of the old toll House and the North Ridge Trail began on the other side of the Toll House. The old articles and newspaper accounts help with the location, stating that the old survey Road up Green Mountain - now named Cadillac Mountain, got to be very dangerous in places and when the Green Mountain Carriage Company built a new road up Green Mountain, they used a long stretch of the old survey road, up to a point, where the new carriage road veered away from the survey road, and close to where the two roads parted ways was a wire gate that shut the road down when no one was present to collect tolls. This wire gate is still in place today as seen in photos below.

One day as I was exploring the woods not far from the summit I believe I discovered another long stretch of this Green Mountain Carriage road, but I need to return to the area with my GPS and do a bit more research.

This short section of granite wall is a short ways from start of Cadillac Mountain North Ridge Trail, GPS N 44 22.773 - W 068 13.892

Survey road crosses North Ridge Trail at N 44 22.753 - W 068 13.903

Path crosses one way section of Park Loop Road at N 44 22.653 W 068 13.936

After crossing the Park Loop Road look for this granite block just inside the woods to the right, the old survey road continues there and runs parallel to the Park Loop Road and you can see the Park Loop Road from the old survey road.

granite block - N 44 22.676 - W 068 13.935

From here the old Survey road is easy to follow. The location where the Green Mountain Carriage Road veered away from the survey road is at;

N 44 22.418 - W 068 13.982 - here the survey road continues straight ahead into the woods while the Green Mountain carriage road moves at an angel to the left. A very short ways along the carriage road is the wire gate mentioned in some old articles, N 44 22.404 - W 068 13.975 From the wire gate the road is easy to follow all the way to the Cadillac Mountain Summit Road.