“we just opened yesterday”
“are you near the carriage roads?”
“yes, we’re half a mile to the entrance of the carriage roads at duck brook road.”
“do you have bike racks?”
“yes.”
To pretend I was interested in staying in their hotel, I asked, “so how much would it cost to stay in your hotel?”
“$289 for a weekday night”
“great. thanks.” I thought that’s a very expensive rate, especially in the age of corona… I wondered how much more ludicrous the weekend rate would be. in my youth I’d pay $15 for a campsite. Split amongst 3 college students that resulted in a paltry $5 per night expense. Throw in a couple cans of sardines, we lived like thieves. when we got to the hotel, we could understand why the hotel charged so much. Perched on a hill, the hotel had commanding views of Frenchman Bay and the Porcupine islands below. But for us, a family of 4 completely drenched in sweat after a long bike ride, all we cared about was their bike racks tucked by the side entry of the hotel. we had rented the bikes as the Bar Harbor bicycle store was closing. When I asked whether we could lock the bikes overnight at the bike store so we could continue biking the next morning within our 24 hour rental period, they recommended parking the bikes at fancy hotels instead, since they had better security.
Biking in acadia is a rich man’s experience… literally. You park bikes at fancy hotels, and you ride on roads built by John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of the richest man in US history. At the age of 36, John Jr. quit work and devoted himself to philanthropy. Over his lifespan, he oversaw the disbursement of $537 million in gifts to educational, cultural, medical and other charitable projects. In New York alone he founded Rockefeller University, built Riverside Church, bequeathed the site for the United Nations headquarters and the MOMA and donated the Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park. In 1910, Rockefeller bought a summer home in seal harbor, acadia. Between 1913-1940, he spent $3 million dollars constructing 57 miles of carriage roads on his private land. Rockefeller had the foresight to realize how traffic and bad planning could ruin acadia, so he set about creating an alternative route of transportation for visitors on horse drawn carriages that banned cars. To achieve his goal, he acquired over 10,000 acres of land between the mountains to construct the roads to make acadia and its great views accessible to all visitors.
Rockefeller was involved with every stage of the work, from the concept to the details of execution. Rockefeller had learned road building from his father. In 1873 John D. Rockefeller Sr. bought land outside his native Cleveland to build a summer house. John Sr. carved out roads, installed stone bridges and landscaped 700 acres. From his father, John Jr. learned how to lay out a road according to the contours of the land and lay a grade that could easily accommodate a carriage. When the family moved to New York, the rockefellers often went carriage-driving through Central Park.
As I biked acadia, I saw similarities between its roads and central park’s roads. like central park, the carriage roads in acadia are articulated and carefully separated 3 dimensionally from the other circulation routes. In central park, there’s a complex network of carriage roads, bicycling and jogging paths, traverse roads for automobiles that connect the east side of manhattan to the west side. In acadia, there’s a complex web of carriage roads, hiking trails, streams, and car loops. Like central park, the routes of circulation in acadia are segregated and distinct. Hiking in acadia, you are barely aware of the carriage roads. they’re tucked into the forest, or cross streams and pathways with discrete stone arches.
We spent nearly 8 hours biking up and down the mountain carriage roads in our last day of acadia. It was a great way to recap our stay as we quickly traversed the park and saw the mountains and lakes from familiar but different vantage points. One road cut through the rockslide mid-slope on Penobscot mountain. On our right were the Jordan cliffs, on our left, Jordan pond and its trails. at a resting point, I thought about our misty canoe rides playing checkers with loons, perilous night-time hiking though boulders along the shores, and our sunset hike on the ridge of Penobscot above. Since the rocks formed shear walls on both sides, as we pedaled through this road, we were able to sneak up on a deer. One unexpected benefit in traversing the park on bike, was that we could sneak up on unsuspecting animals at higher speeds. in our last bike ride alone, we breezed by the mosquitoes and encountered deer, a turtle, a pileated woodpecker and even a peregrine falcon.
According to his granddaughter, Ann Rockefeller Roberts, who is a landscape architect, “John Jr. had deep personal feelings for the earth and its beauty, his conviction that the Divine Presence is revealed in nature, and his belief that nature plays an important role. He hiked through his forests to plan his roads. He hired engineers to do the bridges and a work crew of 60 to cut 16-foot-wide roads. The men had to quarry the granite by hand, lay down road foundations with split granite slabs and smaller rocks, add clay and gravel to the surface, build retaining walls, dig drainage ditches and install culverts. The protective stones perched along the edges are still known familiarly as ''Rockefeller's teeth.''
Following the advice of then Harvard president Charles Elliot ''I supposed that you appreciate the fact that well-built roads are the most durable works of man…. They outlast all other structures and monuments.'' Rockefeller would leave his legacy at acadia through his carriage road paths which spans 57 miles and include 17 stone bridges. Bike these roads, and you follow Rockefeller in time as he carved through spruce and hemlock-covered mountains, around glacier-formed lakes, across streams and over chasms to share his love of the incredible views of mountains, lakes and the Atlantic of Acadia.
a biking video set to 'parachute' by sean lennon, for all my skydiving readers out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment