John Davison Rockefeller’s Carriage Roads — 20 July 2022

John D. Rockefeller Jr, son of the infamous John D, was an avid horseman. He owned a summer ‘cottage’ on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. America was entering the Automobile Age in the first half of the twentieth century. John D. wanted to ride his horses and drive his horse drawn carriages on his beloved Mt. Desert Island free from the noise and pollution of automobiles. Between 1916 and 1940 he paid for and oversaw the construction of fifty-seven miles of ‘Carriage Roads’ in the newly created Acadia National Park for the enjoyment of all…no motorized vehicles allowed. These sixteen-foot-wide broken stone roads were built to take advantage of the terrain’s natural contours and stunning views. Seventeen stone bridges were built as a part of the project.

We left Hull Cove on our bikes in the early hours of the day.

Pedalled to Witch Hole Pond.

No one seems to know how this pond got its name. It was, however, the location of the Bar Harbor, Maine Pest House. Pest Houses were common in the early days of the U.S. People with infectious or unknown ailments were set to Pest Houses to be quarantined.

Acadia and Pest Houses…brings to mind that famous epic poem, Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline and Gabriel, two young lovers, are separated during the British expulsion of Acadians, French Huguenots, from Canada. They struggle all their lives to find each other.

Evangeline’s quest to find Gabriel takes her to Louisiana, where the descendants of the Acadians are called Cajuns today, up the Mississippi to Michigan, finally in Pennsylvania, old and tired, she settles in with a community of Quakers. A plague visits the area and Evangeline helps tend to the sick in a Pest House. One day she is suddenly overcome with a sense of joy. She looks around, her eyes freeze at the sight of an old man lying on a cot dying…Gabriel. The lovers share a last kiss before Gabriel dies in Evangeline’s arms.

On to Eagle Lake.