Rockefeller's Carriage Roads
Near Bar Harbor, Maine
When the automobile arrived on Mount Desert Island, one very rich man decided he wanted a place to escape from it. That man was John D. Rockefeller Junior, and between roughly nineteen thirteen and nineteen forty he personally financed and directed the building of a network of carriage roads across this landscape, more than fifty miles of them in all.
They were engineered with great care, broken stone laid down in layers, graceful curves following the contours of the hills, and they were deliberately closed to motor cars. On these roads there would be only horses, carriages, and walkers. Rockefeller loved to ride, and he hated the noise and speed of the automobile intruding on the quiet.
He also financed sixteen of the seventeen graceful stone bridges, each one different, hand cut from local granite to arch over streams and gorges. Along the edges he set rows of rough granite blocks as guardrails. Locals nicknamed them Rockefeller's teeth.
He built two Tudor style gatehouses to guard the entrances. Today you can still walk or bike or ride a carriage on these roads, gliding through the forest at the pace of a slower century, exactly as their creator intended.
