The Van Santvoord Trail - a Hiking Enigma

It is not often that you can be hiking on one trail but then reach a sign that says you are on another trail. This can be confusing, maybe even frightening, yet this is precisely what a hiker experiences in Acadia National Park when hiking on the Triad Trail. The name of the trail relates to the three peaks in a scenic section of the Park south of Pemetic Mountain that is known simply as The Triad.

Van Santvoord memorial

On a granite ledge near the East Triad peak there is a 22x5-inch bronze memorial plaque that identifies the trail, however, as "The Van Santvoord Trail."*1  The plaque was placed there and dedicated in 1916 following completion of the trail's construction.

The trail honors John V. Van Santvoord, who, as Path Committee chairman of the Seal Harbor Village Improvement Society, laid out the route in 1912. Construction of this loop trail started in 1915. The trailhead was in a valley off the old Wildwood Farm Road west of today's Wildwood Stables and ascended the West Triad peak. It continued across the Middle and East Triad peaks. Beyond the latter it descended to its origin in the valley for a total distance of 1.4 miles.*2  A section of the subsequently built carriage road running between the Wildwood Stables and the Jordan Pond House cut the trail in two spots near its southern end. Steps, overhung and obscured by dense pines, continue down from the carriage road.

John Van Santvoord, born in New Jersey about 1844, was one of four sons of admiralty lawyer Cornelius Van Santvoord. A banker, an owner of the Hudson River Day Line boat company and a resident of New York City, he summered in Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island and was the second chairman of its Village Improvement Society path committee (1907 -1913).

Lake Mohonk Mountain House
Detroit Pub. Co - Library of Congress

Tragically in 1913 servants found him drowned in his bathtub, apparently of a heart attack, at the Lake Mohonk Mountain House, a resort hotel 90 miles north of NYC. He had gone to this scenic Hudson Valley spot to relax following the death of his sole remaining brother.

Van Santvoord Trail staircase

The Van Santvoord Trail does not exist in the Park's path and trail inventory. It is no longer shown by this name on trail maps. In fact, a .35-mile section of it south of the East Triad to its terminus in the valley has been missing from maps for 70 years. The last map on which the entire trail appears is the 1942 Topographic Map of Acadia National Park and Vicinity. The missing section nebulously reappears 29 years later on the 1971 Appalachian Mountain Club Map of Mount Desert Island - Acadia National Park where it is described as "trail-condition unknown or abandoned." This missing trail section was intricately constructed, with numerous steps and four winding staircases shaping its way south from near the East Triad summit. For reasons not known the Park chose not to maintain this section. Instead, it connected the remaining sections of the Van Santvoord Trail to two other trails, renamed them the Hunters Brook Trail and the Triad Trail, and dissolved the Van Santvoord name. Fortunately the memorial plaque was left in place.

The Van Santvoord Trail (red)

Will the Park reopen the Van Santvoord Trail? Those who have hiked it in its entirety would strongly recommend the Park seriously consider it. Not only would a historic trail with skillful stone craftsmanship and spectacular views be reinstated for the pleasure of Park visitors, but also the hiking enigma would be solved.

* Footnotes:
1  Memorial GPS coordinates:  N44° 19.198'  W068° 14.220'
2 All distances are computed from the 1942 map referred to above.

George Bucknam Dorr - the Father of Acadia National Park

George B. Dorr
Courtesy: ANP-NPS

George B. Dorr has been called the "Father of Acadia National Park." Appropriately so. His successful efforts to preserve this beautiful area involved frequent travel between Mount Desert Island, ME and Washington, DC and extensive coordination between the Federal Government and the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations to have its acquired property accepted as Federal land. Later he served as Acadia National Park's first superintendent, a job he held for nearly 30 years.

George Bucknam Dorr was born in 1853 in his parents’ home on the shore of Jamaica Pond in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, MA. He came to MDI with his parents in the summer of 1868. Eight years later they built their Bar Harbor summer home, which they named Oldfarm, on 90 acres at Compass Harbor. The property's entrance is a mile south of the Bar Harbor village green.*1  Dorr was a horticulturalist and in 1896 he established the Mount Desert Nurseries on 20 acres of his Oldfarm property. Irrigation pipes and old culverts off the Schooner Head Path are still visible.*2  He also owned the Bear Brook Quarry, located at the north base of Champlain Mountain.*3  It is below the Park Loop Road parking lot opposite the entrance to the Champlain North Ridge Trail (former name: Bear Brook Trail).

Dorr was among the original founders of the HCTPR in 1901and its incorporators in 1903. Through Dorr’s determination and the efforts of members of the HCTPR, of which Harvard President Charles W. Eliot was President and Dorr its First Vice-President, some 6000 acres of donated land, including Cadillac Mountain, were acquired and presented to President Woodrow Wilson for federal protection. As a result, Wilson established Sieur De Monts National Monument in 1916. Dorr had suggested the name in honor of the Frenchman under whom Samuel de Champlain sailed; it was Champlain who named Mount Desert Island in 1604. In 1919 Congress gave it national park status and renamed it Lafayette National Park in honor of the French general and American Revolutionary War hero. In 1927 Dorr secured the donation of over 2,000 acres of promised land on Schoodic Peninsula across Frenchman Bay from the heirs of native Mainer and wealthy NY-entrepreneur John G. Moore. Moore's daughters, who had immigrated to Great Britain and become citizens, suggested their land donation to the Park could go through if the French name of the Park were changed. Thus in 1929, upon Dorr's suggestion, the Park's name changed from Lafayette to Acadia.

Dorr, who was six feet tall and blue-eyed, never married. He died at his beloved Oldfarm estate in 1944 at the age of 90. According to his wishes, he was cremated at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA and his ashes were scattered beneath the trees at the northwestern foot of Champlain Mountain near the 12-acre Beaver Dam Pond. A popular but entirely fictitious tale maintains that Dorr's ashes were scattered over Oldfarm from an airplane and into the teacups of women relaxing below! A simple memorial stone was placed at the Dorr family lot in Mount Auburn Cemetery. It is often stated he died penniless, having expended all of his wealth on the Park. But that may not be so. His estate gave Bar Harbor's Jesup Memorial Library $12,865.63 and equal amounts of $6,432.81 to the HCTPR and the Abbe Museum of Bar Harbor. His memorial was dedicated on August 29, 1947 at Sieur de Monts Spring. It reads:

In Memory of
George Bucknam Dorr
1853  -  1944
Gentleman  Scholar
Lover of nature
Father of this
National Park
Steadfast in his zeal
to make the beauties
of this Island
available to all

1947 Dedication
Courtesy: Woodlawn Museum

Today

Dorr's memorial is located behind the Sieur de Monts Nature Center.*4  Less than two months after the memorial had been dedicated, MDI suffered a devastating fire that destroyed a third of the Park, including Sieur de Monts. The Dorr memorial plaque survived. The granite stone on which it was attached apparently did not, as the memorial is now secured to a different stone but in the approximate location. Also in his honor, Dry Mountain, which overshadows the Sieur de Monts area, was renamed Dorr Mountain.

What became of the Oldfarm estate? Dorr donated it to Acadia National Park in 1941with the wish that it would at least be used as a place for visiting VIPs to meet and stay. The park tore down his Oldfarm home 10 years later, but remnants of it exist.*5  Storm Beach Cottage, the 1879 guest house into which Dorr had moved after conveying Oldfarm, remains and serves as seasonal Park employee housing.*6

Oldfarm home
Courtesy: ANP-NPS

Storm Beach Cottage

The Oldfarm estate no longer comprises its original 90 acres. Today there are about 60 acres under Park control. Over the years the Oldfarm property has been neglected and it has transformed itself into a quasi town park enjoyed for strolls, dog walks, and occasional bike rides. On the official Park map it is shaded as Park property but not identified.

Home site cleanup-Dec. 2011

Local groups, sensing the evanescence of a significant tribute to the Park's founder, have lobbied the Park for years to do something about it. With renewed interest the Park this past December let a small team of experienced volunteers clean up the home site of debris and some surrounding vegetation and remove the growth of moss carpet from its brick floors. Much more can and needs to be done. It is hoped that with Park permission and guidance work will continue on the site and in time George B. Dorr's Oldfarm estate will receive the historical recognition it deserves.

Oldfarm aerial view

* Footnoted GPS coordinates:
1  estate entrance:  N44° 22.427'  W068° 11.834'
2  path entrance:  N44° 22.345'  W068° 11.670'
3  quarry:  N44° 21.785'  W068° 11.566'
4  memorial:  N44° 21.721'  W068° 12.466'
5  home:  N44° 22.447'  W068° 11.577'
6  cottage:  N44° 22.317'  W068° 11.560'

The Magnificent and Mysterious Homans Path

Hiking in Acadia National Park is an extraordinary experience. The Park maintains about 135 miles of beautiful and interesting paths and trails, ranging from the easy to the strenuous and even perilous. Many are memorial paths. One of the latter is the Homans Path. Its entrance is located in the Sieur de Monts Spring area near the junction of the Jesup Path and the Hemlock Road.*1


Homans Path entrance

The path is named for Eliza Lee Homans. In 1908 she gave the first large gift of land to the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations. It consisted of 141 acres and included The Bowl and The Beehive on Champlain Mountain, two popular hiking destinations today. At the time, the HCTPR was attempting to acquire land on Mount Desert Island for protection from development and for preservation for public enjoyment. It is interesting to note that Eliza, in giving this property, reserved the right to keep a boathouse on The Bowl, a 10-acre pond, and specified the Beehive Mountain Aqueduct Company would continue to use the pond to provide water to nearby residents. No sign of the boathouse is evident today and the BMAC no longer exists.


The Bowl

The Beehive

Eliza was born in 1832 in Dover, NH, and in 1856 married Charles Dudley Homans. Charles, born in Brookfield, MA, in 1826, graduated from Harvard in 1846 and was a physician and a president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. They lived at the "Homans Cottage" on property abutting the south side of the Schooner Head Overlook, 3.8 miles south of Bar Harbor's village green. Charles died in Bar Harbor in 1886; Eliza died there 28 years later. Both are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.


Mt Auburn Cemetery

The Homans estate was purchased in 1924 through private efforts and is now Park property. All that remains of the estate, once consisting of a house, farmhouse and stable, is a covered well and some pipes emanating from it.

The highly crafted, stone-stepped Homans Path has a mysterious history from the 1940s, when it ceased to appear on maps for over 60 years. Built in 1915-1916 shortly after Eliza's death, the path last appeared on the 1941 Path and Road Map of the Eastern Part of Mount Desert Island, Maine and did not reappear until indicated on the 2005 Acadia National Park map. The Park "reopened" it in 2003 as part of the Acadia Trails Forever project, a joint effort of Acadia National Park and Friends of Acadia to rehabilitate and restore the Park's trails. In October 2006 the path sustained damage from an earthquake but was successfully repaired and reopened the following year.

Homans Path

It is a magnificent path to experience and not soon to be forgotten. It consists of granite steps, passages and overhangs on its 0.33 mi length.  Its vertical height is 328 ft and should be considered moderately strenuous. Once at the top hikers can continue on to the 1270-ft summit of Dorr Mountain via the Schiff Path or return to Sieur de Monts via the Emery Path or the Kurt Diederich Climb, three other stellar memorial paths.



Homans Path - aerial view

Postscript: ANP treats trails and paths differently, with the latter showing significant human engineering, such as the addition of steps, staircases, and iron ladders and handrails. It also respects the historical names originally applied to these paths by their benefactors and builders.

 

*Footnote:

1 Homans Path entrance GPS coordinates: N44° 21.780' W068° 12.549'

Waldron Bates -- Pathmaker

Waldron Bates - The Pathmaker

There is perhaps no better Acadia National Park memorial to begin with than with this one.

On the south side of Gorham Mountain at the intersection of the Gorham Mountain Trail and the Cadillac Cliffs Path is a bronze plaque attached to a granite wall.*1

It is a memorial to Waldron Bates, designed by New York sculptor and Bar Harbor summer resident, William Ordway Partridge. It was placed there in September 1910 and reads:

1856-1909

WALDRON BATES

IN MEMORIAM

MCMX

PATHMAKER

Photo: Harvard University Archives

Waldron Bates was born on November 24, 1856 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Samuel Worcester and Anna Matilda (How) Bates and named in honor of his maternal grandmother, Eliza P. (Waldron) How. His two siblings were Samuel Worcester Jr. and Charles How. He was also the nephew of Charles T. How, an early developer of Bar Harbor. Bates graduated from Harvard in 1879 and received his law degree from Boston University in 1882. He never married.

Bates first visited Mount Desert Island about 1880 and joined the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association (VIA) in 1892, later becoming the organization's Path Committee chairman (1900-09) and president (1904-05). In 1896 he established himself as a mapmaker with the publication of the "Map of Mount Desert Island" and the "Path Map of the Eastern Part of Mount Desert Island" with co-cartographers Edward Rand and Herbert Jaques. Bates was one of the original members of the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, the Maine-chartered organization founded in 1901 for the purpose of "acquiring, owning and holding lands and other property in Hancock County for free public use."

Bates distinguished himself as a path maker. He planned and engineered trails to interesting rock formations and exhilarating sites along rock ledges, wrote instructions about how to construct safe and durable trails, instituted a signage protocol to direct hikers along trail routes and designed a simple cairn (stone pile) to mark the paths for hikers. Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, Bates' successor as Bar Harbor VIA Roads and Paths Committee chairman, said of him, "To him, more than any other, is owing the great system of some one hundred and fifty miles of paths, which are so complete as to make difficult at present any additions of value." Prominent among them are the Cadillac Cliffs, Canon Brook, Giant Slide and Gorham Mountain trails.

With a passion for fitness and the outdoors, Bates was a member of the Boston Athletic Association, the organization that founded the Boston Marathon, the Massachusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, Boston's Tennis and Racquet Club and Bar Harbor's Kebo Valley Club. He enjoyed salmon fishing in Canada and in the summer of 1889 even visited Yellowstone National Park. Considering these activities and his strenuous hiking regimen on Mount Desert Island, Bates must have been in excellent physical condition. That may be why his sudden and horrific death, at the age of 52, was so shocking. On February 9, 1909, while en route from Boston to Aiken, South Carolina, on the Southern Railroad, he disembarked briefly at the railway station in Monroe, Virginia. Trying to reenter the train, as it pulled away from the station, he slipped and fell under the wheels and was killed.

News of the tragic death of Waldron Bates prompted the Bar Harbor community to establish additional memorials:
- The Bar Harbor VIA changed the name of the Chasm Path on the north side of Sargent Mountain to the Waldron Bates Memorial Path. In his September 1909 report to the Bar Harbor VIA, Path Committee chairman Dr. Mitchell stated, "It was the last one [path] to which our friend, Mr. Bates, gave attention, and which he meant to have put in order for walking." Upon its completion in 1910, the Waldron Bates Memorial Path became the first of Acadia National Park's famed memorial paths. The path is no longer maintained by the Park and is mostly untraceable.
- The Kebo Valley Club, of which Bates had been a director and a designer of its golf course, installed a bronze plaque on a granite boulder at the 18th green (N44 22.855 W68 13.348). It reads "In Memory Of Waldron Bates, 1856-1909, Maker Of These Links To Whose Zeal And Ability The Kebo Valley Club Is Deeply Indebted. Extinctus Amabitur Idem." The Club, later renamed the Kebo Valley Golf Club, also established the annual Waldron Bates Cup golf tournament in his memory.
- In 2001 the Park reintroduced the Bates cairn (below).

These modern memorials guide hikers safely along the summit trails on the eastern side of the Park. Most consist of just two large base stones, a lintel stone joining them above with a directional, pointer stone on top. Bates cairns are maintained in the spring and fall by a group of about 20 volunteers, called Waldron's Warriors, and in the summer by Friends of Acadia Ridge Runners. An observant hiker can still discover some of the original Bates cairns, which nowadays are mostly concealed by moss, lichen and surrounding vegetation.

Bates' body was cremated and interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.

Even in his death Bates sought to care for the island he loved for nearly 30 years. In his will he left $5,000 to the Bar Harbor VIA for it to use the income to repair the "mountain paths of the island of Mount Desert."

Postscript: A fuller account of Bates' death is in my article that appeared in the November 2011 Bar Harbor Historical Society's Newsletter (www.barharborhistorical.org).

* Footnote:
1 Bates memorial GPS coordinates: N44 19.139 W68 11.563