Lost Trails of Mount Desert Island

The history of the trail system on Mount Desert Island is complex, dense, and vast. There were many people who were vital to the creation of the hundreds of trails that exist and have existed on Mount Desert Island. Both organizations and individuals contributed to the planning, building, and maintenance of the trails that make up Acadia National Park. At certain times there were far more trails than there are now and each individual trail has its own unique story and origin. The trails that are no longer marked and maintained are each a significant part of the history of the island. The book Pathmakers (pictured below) from the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation tells the story of all of the people who worked on the trails that have been lost to history. Luckily, we still have the records and the maps to show that the trails once existed.

Truthfully, a short timeline does not even begin to do justice to the vast array of events that occurred in the building of all of the trails. So many different people and organizations were working simultaneously on separate projects at different locations across the island. However, this timeline highlights important events during the creation of the present trail system.

Why are we talking about "lost trails"? Surely, everyone who has ever visited Mount Desert Island is aware that there is an abundance of hiking opportunities on a variety of terrains. How is it possibly that there were ever even more trails than there are today?

There is an overwhelming number of trails that are still in existence. However, there used to be many more trails, which are now unmarked and unmaintained. A great deal of work was put into each and every one of these trails and they deserve the recognition, although they are now closed.

There are many reasons why trails were closed over time. Many were closed due to dangerous conditions, especially if they were more difficult to maintain. Lesser-used trails were closed in order to meet the budget. Why maintain trails that aren't being used? Many of these trail closures came in the 1950s, about a decade after the peak number of trails existed in the park in 1942.

These trail closures caused confusion. Many were still marked on maps for years afterwards. People who were familiar with the now-unmarked trails were still using them because they didn't need to follow maps to know where they were going. Others were upset to see their favorite trails be abandoned by the park.

Over time, some trails have been reopened but others remain a mystery to many, and untouched by the majority of the millions of visitors to the area. (Pathmakers)

The Passamaquody and the Penobscot people inhabited Mount Desert Island for thousand of years before any colonists arrived. They called the island "pemetic," meaning "range of mountains." They lived in sheltered coves, such as Fernald Point, seasonally, living on the island during colder months and moving further inland during the warmer ones. They lived off of natural resources like the clam flats and fresh water springs. They ate deer, bear, moose, and fish and used the birch trees to make their canoes which were their primary source of transportation. The spruce forests were very thick so trail use was limited but they did have carries between water bodies. These first trails were narrow, flat, and short and they were not documented at the time. However, there is a map of potential carry trails. Additionally, they climbed mountains to use as vantage points. Many of our significant and well-used paths today were originated by the Wabanaki.

In the 1700s, settlers took "ownership" of the island. After the revolutionary war, Massachusetts was in charge of the land, but in 1785 the island was divided on the "French Line" -- a path through the woods noted with granite markers. The east side was owned by Marie Theresa de Gregoire and the west sign was given to John Bernard. In 1789 the town of Mount Desert was incorporated and later the island was divided into towns.

The earliest trails on the island were canoe carries used by the Wabanaki people who lived on the island. They mostly travelled on the water but in order to get between bodies of water they used these narrow paths. They were not documented at the time but later, European colonists widened these existing trails for their own purposes. The Wabanaki people still live on Mount Desert Island today, but they have had to adapt in order to survive amongst European settlers and everything that came after. In the 1760s the European settlers began to grade the existing paths belonging to the native groups and used them for carts. They continued expanding this system to be used to travel across the island. In the 1800s tourism brought artists and climbers to the island and trails summited mountains. The "Earth led the path" for the early Wabanaki trails whereas the later, European trails did not "harmonize" with the Earth and instead "challenged the landscape" (St. Germain and Saunders 10). Unfortunately, as they challenged the land, they also challenged the natives, bringing disease which killed 75% of the population on the coast.

In the 1800s many visitors came to the island for art and physical activity. There were many summer homes and hotels popping up all over the island. Because of this, there were intense seasonal changes in population on the island. They formed Village Improvement Societies to help the municipalities deal with this in the late 1800s. Bar Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Seal Harbor, and Southwest Harbor all had Village Improvement Associations or Societies and in 1900 they formed the Joint Path Committee. Across the island there were various different projects headed by various people and groups. Some trails were color coded, others were named as memorial trails for those who had helped create them, but the Joint Path Committee created a standard for signage across the island. This style has changed several times since the beginning, but today you will still notice the similarities across the entire trail system.

Also during this time logging companies were obliterating the forest. By the 1870s the forest was incredibly depleted. These companies were not preservation-minded like those trying to build the park. Out of this deforestation, came many of the roads that we still use today.

People were starting to make plans to develop the land in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Charles Eliot Jr. was both a landscape architect and naturalist. When he suddenly pasted away in 1897 his father, Charles Eliot Sr., taught by his son to protect the land, created preservation plans in 1902. He motivated the residents to stand with him and they formed a group to help protect the land.

In 1910 John D Rockefeller bough land on Barr Hill and a few years later, in 1913, he began building carriage roads on his own property, buying adjacent land as he went. Similarly, George Dorr began by building trails on his own land and later donating it to the park. In 1915 Rockefeller requested to be able to expand his system to connect villages and mountains. Also at this time the ban on automobiles on the island was lifted. This was a controversial topic at the time, with many people hoping to keep cars off the island. At this time, sidewalks and bridles were also added in preparation for automobile traffic. Rockefeller's roads provided a different kind of transportation -horse drawn carriages. In 1916 the Sieur de Monts National Monument was established. In the years after this many activities were expanded due to World War I but then in 1919 the land was re-established as Lafayette National Park in 1919. In the 1920s trails were created going to the summits of all major mountains on the island, except for Norumbega. In 1927 the first motor road was put in between Eagle Lake and Jordan Pond. In 1929 the park officially became Acadia National Park. A few years after this in 1932, a road was built, ascending Cadillac Mountain. During this time everything was very dynamic and frequent changes were made. All of the mountains got renamed. New people were shifting in and out of leadership positions in trail creation.

By the 1930s, road construction became a priority which overshadowed some of the work being done on footpaths. The recreational walking trend was less popular at this time and people were more interested in touring the island via automobiles now that they were able to. The construction of auto roads had an impact on the physical integrity of walking trails. Around this time the country was also experiencing the economic depression. President Roosevelt enacted three Acts which led to more trail building on the island. Multiple groups such as the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did a lot of trail building and maintenance starting in the early 1930s. This was helpful both to the men, who were able to be employed, and to the park, which continued to grow. The CWA was made up of local men and the CCC was made up of people who were brought in to work and were also less experienced in manual labor. Both groups did a lot of important work at this time, including creating "truck trails" which provided fire safety and access to trailheads. In the early 1940s the CCC camps began to close down.

In the 1940s there was an abundance of trails and it was difficult to maintain them all. Most of the VIA and VIS groups had given up their roles for the park to continue with. Campground building also became a priority for the park at this time. After World War II, tourism increased and the park began to close trails in order to stick to a budget. In the mid 1940s the trail system was in disarray and after the Fire of 1947, it was unpleasant to hike in all of the wreckage from the fire.

In the mid 1950s the trail system was evaluated and reduced based on a variety of factors. Trails that were used less often were less important to maintain with a limited budget. Other paths that followed a route that was parallel to another or that provided the walker with a similar visual experience to another were cut. If the trails were in poor condition or it would require a lot of funds to keep them maintained, they were cut. Others were cut simply because they crossed land that was now private. In the late 1950s 70 trails were cut from the system. Trails that were deemed dangerous were dismantled to prevent people from trying to continue hiking on a dangerous and unmaintained route. Old signs were removed in 1959 and replaces with new ones at this time. In attempts to prevent people from continuing to use abandoned trails, brush piles were dropped at trail heads. However, many people were familiar with these routes and did not have to rely on a map to know where they were going so the trails did not entirely fall out of use. Maps became confusing at this time due to the unmarked trails and changes in mountain names. In addition, some organizations continued to mark these abandoned trails on their maps for a few years.

The 1970s-90s marked a period of rebuilding for the park. Trails were reopened and rerouted and old abandoned culverts were cleaned and fixed. Signage was changed again and new groups popped up to help the park with maintenance. GPS and GIS were helpful for trail mapping at this time and new "bog walk" trails were being created to navigate walkers through wet areas. In 1992 there was a General Management Plan for Acadia National Park and from 1999-2002 there was a Hiking Trails Management Plan and Environmental Assessment. At this time there were about 3 million visitors in a year and in 1999 the Island Explorer bus was started to help people get around to different sites in the park. Studies of the areas at the time provided lots of information about the effects on the land due to human activity on them. Trail widening became and issue when hikers had to step off trails to make way for others. Some trails, such as those on steeper sides of mountains, typically east-west sides due to glaciation, require more maintenance. Some trails get closed at certain times of the year for peregrine falcon mating.

What is Georeferencing? Georeferencing is a useful tool in GIS that can be used to digitize paper maps. It involves adding an image to the map and aligning it with the same features on the digital version. Point are selected on both maps to try to get them to overlap as accurately as possible. It is not a perfect process, but it is very useful to transfer paper data to a digital format. After I georeferenced the maps I was working with, I worked to digitize the trails.

To digitize, I created vertices in a new layer to trace the hand drawn lines of the trail on the paper map. Because the georeferencing isn't perfect, this digitized map is not as accurate as one that has been mapped with GPS coordinates. In the image below you can see my digital lines traced over the paper trails. The blue trails are actually collected with GPS by the national park service and the layer was created by Gordon Longsworth, GIS professor at COA, but the green and red lines are once that I digitized from my georeferenced image. I georeferenced them to give an approximation of where the historic trails would be in relation to the present ones. It is evident that the vast amount of trails we have today is far from the number their once were.

I wanted to work on this project due to personal interest in the trails on the island and my own curiosities about why the current trails we have today are the ones that have lasted all these years. I was curious about the process of picking a trail location and why some trails have fallen into disarray, lost within historical maps, while others have been chosen to be used by millions of visitors every year. While doing research for this project, I learned that so many people were involved in every choice at every time for hundreds of years. So much thought and care went into the design of the trail system and so many people cared about the projects they were doing. Ultimately, Acadia National Park would not be what it is today without the hard work of so many people. I think it is important to recognize the lost trails, as well as the present trails because each one meant something to the people who built it. Today, we all enjoy trails that were originated by the Wabanaki, or were walked in the 1800s by a painter, or were created by someone in the 1900s who had a vision for the park. There is a rich history on each and every rock and root where we step.

Brown, Margaret Coffin. Pathmakers: Cultural Landscape Report for the Historic Hiking Trail System of Mount Desert Island History, Existing Conditions, and Analysis. Prepared by Margaret Coffin Brown and the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation; project manager, Jim Vekasi; contributors, Karen Anderson, Christin Arato, Sarah Baldyga, Christian Barter, Don Beal, Brooke Childrey, Peter Colman, Mark Davison, Laura Hayes, David Goodrich, Charlie Jacobi, Keith Johnston, Lauren Meier, J. Tracy Stakely, Gary Stellpflug, Stacie Van Wyk, and Paul Weinbaum. Boston Massachusetts, Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation and National Park Service, 2006.

St. Germain, Tom; Saunders, Jay. Trails of History. Bar Harbor, Maine, Parkman Publications, 1993.

Tompkins, Jill. “Still Here: The Wabanaki Presence in Acadia.” DownEast, Accessed March 14, 2023.  https://downeast.com/land-wildlife/wabanaki-and-acadia/#:~:text=Wabanaki%20people%2C%20particularly%20the%20Penobscot,for%20more%20than%2010%2C000%20years