Abandoned Trails Of Acadia national Park is a site dedicated to covering lost and abandoned hiking trails in Acadia. We cover old ghost trails as well as phantom trails, offering visitors to our site more trail listings, more trail details and more maps than any other online site. We regularly update the site and add newly discovered information as it becomes available.
Throughout Acadia National Park as well as Mount Desert Island, you can find little pockets of quietness - if you know where to look for them. Sometimes you just stumble upon them, as with my post Where Is It?
STONE BARN - CROOKED ROAD - BAR HARBOR MAINE
So let me tell you about another little pocket of quietness located in Bar Harbor, Maine, a little historic area called The Stone Barn. So you may be saying, yeah, I have been to that location, pretty cool stone barn, but not much to see. Yet the site is a favorite with the locals and you can come away with some stunning photos, if you know where to look. You see, besides the stone barn and other historic buildings there, hidden off in the tree's is a hiking trail which passes through woods and out into a huge field swamped with colorful lupines.
STONE BARN - POND - BAR HARBOR MAINE
When the trail splits, go right, and you will get some nice views of the old barn and historic buildings from the rear, and off to the left is an almost magical little pond. The hidden trail may not be an abandoned trail, but it is well hidden and worth listing along side any abandoned trail on the island.
The Stone Barn is located at the corner of the Crooked Road and Norway Drive. The Stone Barn Farm is one of a small number of surviving farm properties on Mount Desert Island. Located at the junction of Crooked Road and Norway Drive, the farm has a distinctive stone barn, built in 1907, along with a c. 1850 Greek Revival farm house and carriage barn. The farmhouse and carriage house were probably built sometime between 1850 and 1860, based on their architectural style, although local histories have placed the farmhouse construction as early as 1840.
So if your approaching along the Crooked road from Hulls cove - route 3, when you come to Norway Drive turn right and pull into tiny pull over there. The path is hidden and close to side of road. You will see one or two telephone poles and a large metal box, go past them and the trail begins just inside the woods.
STONE BARN - BAR HARBOR MAINE
WILDFLOWERS - STONE BARN - BAR HARBOR MAINE
Gathering photos near the Stone Barn
Crooked Road, Bar Harbor, Maine
LITTLE HUNTER'S BEACH
Little Hunter's Beach seems to also have joined the long and growing list of abandoned places in Acadia National Park. The Little Hunter's brook Trail also seems to have vanished off maps. If you have never been to Little Hunter's Beach than you have missed out on a unique spot within the park.
It is not a sand beach, it is a rock beach, and a small one at that. What makes it such a unique place is it is located in a small cove where the waves come crashing in, which over the years acts much like a rock tumbler, causing many of the stones there to be either perfectly round or perfectly oval shaped. When my kids were young I would take them there and they would call the rocks eggs.
When I passed by there last year I noticed the beach no longer had a sign marking it and checked a current map and saw it no longer listed. In fact, its bigger sister, Hunter's Beach, further up the road, was also missing from the map.
LITTLE HUNTERS BEACH - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
Some people believe these perfectly smooth stones hold mysterious healing powers while others just like to take one or two home with them, however - that is illegal and can earn you a date in court before a Federal Judge. It's okay to look and admire the unique stones, but leave them were they are for others to enjoy. Over the years because people steal the stones, there are much fewer of them today.
LITTLE HUNTERS BEACH - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
So how do you locate Little Hunter's Beach, it's easy, but you will have to be alert for the things to look for.
Little Hunters Beach - Acadia National Park
Drive along the One Way section of the Park Loop road, past the popular Sand Beach and Thunder Hole. Continue past the Fabbri picnic area, and you will soon cross a stone bridge. Here the road climbs up hill, and you will soon pass the service entrance to Blackwoods Campground, there will be a cross walk and a wooden fence on the left. Now drive on for some distance still, but keep looking for a small stone bridge you will come to. Pull over before the small bridge, and on the left hand side of the road there will be a long wooden stairway leading to the beach.
LITTLE HUNTERS BEACH - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
Now if you want to be certain you find the beach, go to the Bar Harbor Village Green and take the Island Explorer free bus, the Sand Beach bus, and get off at Blackwoods Campground - or drive or bike to the campground. Once there, from the bus stop, take the camp loop road to the far left, you will pass tent sites on your right and woods on the left. In a short ways you will come to a path on the left that leads to Ocean Drive and the high cliffs overlooking the ocean. This is a very short path and once use to be a service road for the campground.
At Ocean Drive (the Park Loop Road) turn right and walk in the same direction as the traffic in til you reach the small bridge with its steep wooden stairway to the left of the bridge. There is also a sign telling about the area tucked just inside the woods there, but nearly impossible to see when driving past.
LITTLE HUNTERS BEACH
"Unmarked Stone Beach"
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
Hot off the press as they say is the newest tool in discovering the experience of locating and exploring secret locations and abandoned trails in Acadia National Park. The name of the book pretty much says it all, "The Acadia You Haven't Seen - Abandoned Trails and Forgotten Places," by Matthew Marchon.
When it comes to researching and locating hidden and secret places within Acadia National Park, no one covers this stuff like Matt does, as he is gifted as a writer as well as a photographer. Weather it be abandoned trails, phantom trails, ghost trails, or abandoned and forgotten places within the National Park, no one covers it the way Matthew Marchon does, and for this reason this book is a must have for your book shelf. I predict this off trail hiking guide will be one of those books that people will be reaching for just as they do with Pathmakers - so if you have any interest at all in Abandoned Trails or learning more about the forgotten places in Acadia National Park, this book is for you.
To order a copy of THE ACADIA YOU HAVEN'T SEEN click on the link below.
At the moment we don't know exactly what to call this trail, but yeah, we spent the other day by the picnic area by Otter Cliffs. We took a photo of the monument there, searched around in the woods not far from the bathrooms and located what appears to be a old well capped off with a very large arched slab of granite, you can still see the well under the slab.
Our real goal was to walk the Otter Cliffs trail to get some photos of the cliffs where Kathy Frost had been pushed off the cliff to her death by her husband, the story is on my site Deaths In Acadia national Park in chronological order. We also did a blog People Killed In Acadia National Park..
So we got the photos of the cliffs we wanted and walked back through the picnic area and out onto the Otter Creek Road a short ways, when I saw a small field I wanted to check out. To the far left corner of the field was a couple of apple tree's plum full of apples. The apples were on the small side and sour, too bad, there was a number of apple pies just begging to be made.
As I was taking photos of the apple tree's, I noticed what appeared to look like a trail in the woods on the other side of the apple tree, so we checked it out. Sure enough, it was an old trail, or road. My son say road, but to me it appears to be too narrow for a road, but it was in very good shape for how old it was, as you can see in the photos. Clear away some of the fallen tree's and you have a ready to go trail.
So to the left of the trail we could see one end of it, blocked off by two large boulders, with tree's and brush blocking the view of the trail from the Otter Creek road. So we followed the trail to the right, and for most of the way the trail remained in very good condition and very easy to follow. But the final forth of the trail the good path we had been following quickly ended in what amounted to a deer trail, which we continued to follow. It led to a large parking lot which I would guess was located just up past the Gorham Mountain Parking Lot.
We need to do one more trip back there to see if there is more to this trail, we will update on it in a week or two. Until than you can see the photos we took of the trail the other day.
The Monument at Otter Cliffs, Acadia National Park
Otter Cliff Road can be seen from one end of abandoned trail - Acadia national Park
So we finally got to return back to the area of this abandoned trail-road, checked out the other side of the roadway and could f8ind nothing.
We finally made the trip to McFarland Mountain and the old ski slope. We were surprised the Weather Station the Park Service has in place on the mountain side was as close to the road as it was. It is a ways in at the end of a dirt road, which is gated, but we had expected it to be much further up the mountain side.
MCFARLAND MOUNTAIN AIR QUALITY STATION - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
It was our first trip to the Mountain, and we expected that we would need to spend some time in locating this path or trail I have read about which leads you to the ski slope.
Mcfarland Mountain Ski Slope Trail - Acadia National ParkBut once we reached the monitoring station parking lot, I simply followed the edge of the woods around the corner and there it was, a well worn path through a field with a few tree's.
The path headed right straight to the edge of the woods, when my son spotted rusting metal parts by a large rock at the edge of the field.
MCFARLAND MOUNTAIN SKI SLPOE - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
One of the chair lift suppoorts
We walked over to it to examine it closer, and it turned out to be some rusting metal parts from a chair lift. There was also a concrete platform which had served as one of the supports for the chair lift, oddly we could only locate that one support.
Between the support and a large rock was more rusting metal parts as well as a large electrical box. There was also cables running across the grounds.
A short ways always we located more rusting parts just inside the treeline, with more rusting cables.
From there we followed the ski slope up almost to the summit, than follow a worn path around the corner to the rock pile marking the summit.
There may be more up there as far as the old ski slope goes, but we didn't find anything else other than the two sites on the map.
View looking up the ski slope - Mcfarland Mountain - Acadia National Park
So this trip turned out to be a pretty easy adventure, and went much quicker than we had thought it would. The dirt road leading from the Eagle lake Road up to the weather monitoring station is gated, but oddly there is not a single sign telling people not to enter the area, so we took that as an open invitation.
So how do you reach the site - that is pretty easy. From Bar Harbor, drive out along the Eagle Lake Road, route 233. Mount Desert Street in Bar Harbor runs right out to route 233.
Drive past Eagle Lake, cross a bridge and head uphill. The road continued on and rounds a curve, near the end of the curve is the entrance to the Acadia National Park Eagle Lake Headquarters. A short ways beyond their headquarters, on the right hand side of the road, look for a dirt road with a gate across it - that is the road leading up to the Weather Monitoring Station.
MCFARLAND MOUNTAIN - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
There is at least one piece which stated that Acadia National Park once had their headquarters or sleeping quarters located on Young's Mountain, however this is not true. The CCC did build a trail along with a very small log cabin on Young's Mountain. the tiny cabin served as a shelter for rangers to get into during bad weather as well as a place to spend the night if need be. These tiny "shelter" cabins were located on Young's Mountain, McFarland mountain, Western Mountain, Oak Hill and at Sieur de Monts Spring.
Mcfarland Mountain Ski Slope Trail - Acadia National Park
MCFARLAND MOUNTAIN SUMMIT - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
More rusting chair lift parts
Mcfarland Mountain - Ski Slope Trail - Acadia National Park
MCFARLAND MOUNTAIN - ACADIA NATIONAL PARK
Mcfarland Ski Slope - located this further down in the woods along route ski slope took
While hiking the Strath Eden Trail nearly 20 years ago, I passed an area along the official trail that looked like it was an unmarked trail, so today we went back to that area in hopes we would be able to find it again. Once again we forgot the bug spray and the bugs were relentless, but we did find what we set out to find, an unmarked trail.
Strath Eden Trail
Acadia National Park
Okay, as we began hiking along it we soon realized this was no trail, this was in fact an old abandoned road. You could still see the itre groves, and the entire left hand side of the old road was well built up and lined with rocks - see photos. But no sooner had we begun to wonder where the road went to, that it suddenly came to an end. The area where it ended had towering walls of granite that were smooth and perfectly flat, and clearly appeared to be an old granite mining site.
And on a large rock was a pile of rusting metal parts, a few of the parts seemed to clearly have come off of some sort of truck or machine. Check out the photos and see what you think.
Strath Eden Trail
Acadia National Park
So we poked around the entire area searching for more signs of anything that might be there and found nothing. So we decided to make our way up the mountain side oven an open area and soon came to the woods, and there amid piles of what appeared to be cut granite, one large piece proved this area was once a granite mining area. It had the tell tale grooves evenly spaced along one side.
Drainage Ditch Along Strath Eden Trail Where Old Road Leads To Mining Area
Acadia National Park
Here the drainage ditch veers right away from the official trail, this is where the abandoned road begins.
So to find the general area of tall walls of granite and rusting metal parts, hike along the Stratheden Trail and pay attention to the drainage ditch on the right hand side of the trail not far into the hike. At one point a long section of the ditch makes a sudden right hand turn and actually begins to go up the abandoned road. And you don't have to go up the old road very far before you see how one side of the road is lined with large rocks.
Old Mining Road Off Strath Eden Trail
Acadia National Park
Here you can see how rocks line one side of the old road.
The hardest part of finding this location is in first finding the Stratheden Trail, which is very easy to miss. Begin by driving or biking along the one way section of the Park Loop Road. You will soon pass the pull over for the Cadillac North Ridge Trail. The road than goes down hill, and crosses a large stone bridge - the start of the Gorge Trail is below the bridge.
Pile of rusting Metal Near Granite Mining Area
Acadia National Park
Metal Along Old Road Off Of Strath Eden Trail
Acadia National Park
Continue down the road until you come to a long cruve, half way through the long curve is the Kebo Mountain Trail Head. As soon as you exit the long curve, slow and look for a very tiny pull over on the left and side of the road, that is where the Stratheden Trail begins. The pull over is large enough for one, maybe two cars at the most.
Cut Granite in Woods Off Of Old Road Along Strath Eden Trail
Acadia National Park
The GPS numbers for the start of the Granite mining road, which is mentioned in Path Finders, is Latitude 44 22' 7" N and Longitude 68 12' 53" W.
