Historic Motor Road System: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Acadia National Park
Killion J and Foulds E. 2025. Historic Motor Road System: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Acadia National Park. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 650064. National Park Service. NPS Northeast Regional Office, Boston, Massachusetts / CRIS-CL Database
The coastal islands and rugged shorelines of Maine serve as the setting for the historic motor road system at Acadia National Park, located in Hancock County. Acadia was the first national park established east of the Mississippi River and today encompasses over 47,000 acres across Mount Desert Island, Schoodic Peninsula, and numerous smaller islands. Upwards of 2.5 million visitors annually experience the park’s diverse landscape of granite-domed mountains, woodlands, lakes, marshes, and shorelines of Frenchmans Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, and many do so from the historic motor road system. A majority of the 33.25-mile system is on the east side of Mount Desert Island, where it criss-crosses some of the park’s historic carriage roads, a 44-mile system envisioned, designed, and funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. that predates the motor roads and prohibits vehicular traffic, and the 115-mile network of historic hiking trails that offer woodland walks to rugged climbs. The historic motor road system at Acadia National Park was built in eighteen different phases, between 1922 and 1958. Sixteen of the motor road segments are located on the eastern half of Mount Desert Island, and twelve of them comprise the 18.5-mile park loop road: Kebo Mountain Road (completed 1938), Kebo Mountain Road Extension (1940), Bureau of Public Roads Project 4A2 (1958), Champlain Mountain Road (1940), Ocean Drive (consists of three segments completed in 1929 and 1933-1934), Otter Cliffs Road (1936), Otter Cove Causeway and Blackwoods Road (1939), Day Mountain Road (1941), Day Mountain Road Extension (1951), and Jordan Pond/Eagle Lake Road (1927). Four segments are spurs that connect to the park loop road: Paradise Hill Road on the north side of the loop (two segments completed in 1941 and 1952), Stanley Brook Road (1936) on the south side of the loop, and Cadillac Mountain Road (1931), an interior spur that extends to the summit of Cadillac Mountain. Although originally designed for two-way traffic, most segments of the park loop road, from Kebo Mountain Road to Day Mountain Road, were converted to one-way traffic in the 1980s. The historic motor road system on Mount Desert Island also includes four access roads that connect to local roads: Schooner Head Overlook Access Road, Sieur de Monts Entrance Road, West Street Extension, and Access to State Route 233. The Schoodic Peninsula is the location of the other two segments of the historic motor road system. Schoodic Loop Road (completed 1933-1935) is a one-way road that traces the shoreline. It connects to local roads off State Route 186. Schoodic Point Road (1935) is accessed from Schoodic Loop Road and accommodates two-way traffic. It leads to the Schoodic Education and Research Center (the former U.S Naval Radio Station – Winter Harbor) and Schoodic Point.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Killion, Jeffrey; Foulds, Eliot
- Date of Issue
- 2025
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- ACAD
- Keywords
- Architecture, Automobile, Carriage Roads, Conservation, Conservation of Natural Resources, Creating Social Institutions and Movements, Developing the American Economy, Engineering, Entertainment – Recreation, Expressing Cultural Values, General Recreation, Historic Designed Landscape, Historic Motor Road System, Landscape Architecture, Motor Road System, Motor Roads, Origin And Development Of The National Park Service, Outdoor Recreation, Overlook, Parkway (Landscape), Political and Military Affairs 1865-1939, Protection Of Natural And Cultural Resources, Public Works, Recreation, Rustic Architecture, Shaping the Political Landscape, The Great Depression And Conservation, The Great Depression And The New Deal 1929-1941, The Home Front, Touring Roads and Parkways, Transforming the Environment, Transportation, Transportation by Land and Air, View, Vista, World War II