One inquiry I get inquired of over and over is what is the distinction between a abandoned trail and a phantom trail, so I chose to do a post trying to clarify the diverse sort of trails there are in Acadia National Park.
Official trails are an incredible beginning point, these are trails that are very much kept up by the National Park Service and have trail head signs which as a rule contain the name of the path and the distance the path covers. Men like George Bucknam Dorr, Rudolf Ernst Brünnow, Waldron Bates and others helped build many of these trails and when you climb one of these noteworthy routes you are literally following in their footsteps. In Bates case he would go out and walk the forested areas and mountain sides searching out the best course for the path he wanted to create, and an assistant would go with him blazing the path so trail laborers could come in later and develop the real path, we realize this is the manner by which he worked in light of an old article concerning trail routes Bates was investigating during his stay at Currin House by the shores of Eagle Lake.
Rudolf Ernst Brünnow developed the absolute most challenging trails on Mount Desert Island, trails like the Beehive and Precipice which will test even the most advanced hiker. Brunnow was, in many eyes, an expert path designer whose abilities can not be questioned, he had the vision to build an arrangement of supporting trails to help draw adventurers to a portion of the islands most difficult trails, which he achieved by exploiting a site that was for many years notable to local people as the Great Cave, Brunnow marked out a course to the Great Cave, which was known as the Great Cave Loop, it started at a lower part of the Precipice Trail, advanced toward the Great Cave, at that point proceeded up over the cave along a long series of stone steps, advancing toward the upper segment of the mountain where a little metal scaffold was placed to conect one section of ledge with another before the Great Cave Loop rejoined the Precipice Trail at a spot higher up. Old stories recount local people advancing up to the Great Cave to have picnics inside the cool cavern to escape the heat of summer days and the territory over the Great Cave may of been the area of an unfortunate passing during the 1800's when two school girls fell from a cliff, one becoming pinned under a boulder died several hours later, the others life was spared by landing in the tiop of a large tree, though she suffered cuts and broken bones.
Those who walk along Rudolf Ernst Brünnow's Orange and Black Trail, so named for his school colors, do so believing they have covered the entire trail, but nearly half of the original trail was abandoned for unknown reasons, which included the historical Hanging Steps, huge granite slabs that seem to hang in mid air, a feat created by use of hidden iron rods. For many years the location of these Hanging Steps, along with the location of the Great Cave, were known to but a very few, thankfully an unnamed source came forward and provided key information for which we are very grateful.
Nobody appears to know precisely why large numbers of once mainstream trails were deserted, all of the trails that once lay between Lake Wood and Great Hill were abandoned following the Great Fire of 47, such historic trails as the Great Hill trail system. the Bracken Trail, the Fern and Royal Fern trail, the Fawn Pond Trail, the Witch Hole Pond trail and others.
Today there are a number of popular online sites dedicated to keeping the memory of these abandoned trails alive. The National Park Service can, and does contact map makers to have sites it no longer wants us to find removed from future maps, sites like the Great Cave and more recently Anemone Cave, it was not by accident that one of the most famous and popular caves in all of New England suddenly vanished from maps.
Somebody once asked me what a Ghost Trail is and I can pretty much guarantee you they are not trails that are haunted by ghosts. A true Ghost Trail can show up before you and be easy to follow and suddenly disappear before your eyes; with a little searching the trail once again picks up only to vanish once again, an ideal case of a Ghost trail would be the Bracken Trail, where the only hint of a ghost you will encounter is an old truck hood leaning up against a tree.
A few trails never began as being trails, instances of these are the Stone Arches of Eagle lake, which is more a path then a trail, and the route the Green Mountain (presently Cadillac Mountain) cog train once took. It was only natural for locals to reclaim the mountain side once the train company went out of business, and for a good number of years it became a popular route to hike. I have documented most of the route and have posted GPS figures and done a few videos and it remains one of my favorite hikes, not because of the scenery, but the treasures one encounters along the way, the iron railroad spikes still sticking up out of the granite the long section of built up railway bed, and the only surviving section of rail about two thirds of the way up the mountain side. I would classify this as a Ghost Trail as well.
We can not talk about trail types without a word on Phantom Trails which were never an official trail, but a trail created by one or more people, and this can not be stated strongly enough, the construction of such trails is illegal and getting caught constructing your own trail can earn you a date in Federal Court.
Example of an abandoned trail;
Example of a Ghost Trail;
Example of a Phantom Trail
GREAT HILL PHANTOM TRAIL VIDEO
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