ABANDONED TRAILS OF ACADIA NATIONAL PARK: CADILLAC MOUNTAIN SURVEY ROAD

We had thought this was the Old Buckboard Road that ran up Green Mountain, today called Cadillac Mountain, which competed with the Green Mountain Railroad company to get people to the summit of the Mountain. I am not so sure this was the buckboard road, in part because old maps show the Buckboard road running much closer to the North ridge trail. This is way too far down the mountain side and I tend to believe this may of at one time have been an old survey road which was said to have been built in this area. This road is not too hard to locate and is in very good shape making it fairly easy to follow.
As your traveling along the park loop road, you want to pull over and park in the area where the One Way section of the Park Loop Road begins. Now walk down the one way section, keeping to the right hand side of the roadway for a short ways, until you come to a storm drain - it also has a very large rock in front of it just inside the woods which can easily be seen from the roadway (see photo).

From intersection to storm culvert with large rock

N 44 22 640

W 068 13 964

OLD SURVEY ROAD JUST INSIDE OF WOODS

From the storm drain walk straight into the woods about 2 to 3 car lengths and you come to the old road. Back than, you had only two options to go up Cadillac Mountain, by way of train, or by way of the Buckboard Road which required you pay a fee to the owners of the road, who were not connected to the railroad company.
So once you enter the woods at that storm drain and come to the old road, it will go in two directions, one to the left leads you back in the direction of the North Ridge trail, with the old road coming out onto the Park Loop Road just before a curve in the roadway, and a short distance beyond that curve is the parking area for the north ridge Trail. And if you do go left, the further you go the tire marks get harder to follow.
That is not the case if you go right, the tire grooves in the earth remain easy to see, and dispite some small tree's and brush growing up in the roadway here and there, the road is almost perfectly straight. The road was pretty wet when we hiked it, and we had to often step around wet areas, and a few places where it crossed sections of smooth granite, the granite was some what slippery.

So here at last we have the GPS numbers;

Intersection where One Way section of Park Loop Road begins;
N 44 22 522
W 068 14 041

From intersection to storm culvert with large rock
N 44 22 640
W 068 13 964

From culvert to dirt road in woods
N 44 22 629
W 068 13 944

Follow road to the right to connect to the Cadillac Summit Road.

The hike is not too long and it comes out onto the lower section of the Cadillac Summit Road by a large storm drain big enough to qualify for a cave.
Just as a side note, the old Buckboard Road was once the scene of holdup's, with a gunman nick named the Gentleman Bandit holding up passing buckboards and demanding watches, rings and money from the men. He got the name Gentleman Bandit because he did not rob from the women. At one time a reward of $5,000 was placed on his head but he was never captured.
From the above map you can see the route the Buckboard road took - as far as I known of there was three roads built to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the old Buckboard Road, a survey Road and the current Summit road, the Survey road joins the Summit road at about a quarter of the way up the Summit road..
One thing we do know is that when the Green Mountain Railroad was operating the cog train up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, the Buckboard road was also operating at the same time, carrying paying customers up to the summit by way of horse drawn buckboards. I have read a piece by the park service which stated there is only one known old map that shows a road up Green mountain that has the words "Buckboard Road" written on it - I have not seen that map but would love to get my hands on a copy of it.

OLD WIRE GATE - GREEN MOUNTAIN CARRIAGE ROAD
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK

UPDATE;
We were fortunate to have stumbled upon an old wire gate, with the thick cable with loop on one end still in place, as it was back in the day that the Green Mountain Buckboard Company operated the carriage road up to the summit of Green Mountain. Some one would man the wire gate during the day, with the gate being closed. As a buckboard approached, a fee was paid and the person naming the gate would open it up, allowing the buckboard to pass through. This is a very historic find in the middle of the woods, yet the hidden gate lies within a stones throw of the old survey Road. When the old Buckboard Road was built, it was said to have incorporated a section of the survey road, but at a certain point veered off of that road, taking a different and safer route for buckboards up to the summit of Green Mountain. The wire gate comes up on a number of stories on the old carriage road, and now we know where that wire gate was located. From the wire gate a rough but well worn dirt road runs through the woods until it joins the official Cadillac Mountain Summit road. You can read more on this in my blog on the Buckboard Road.