Cadillac Mountain In The 1880s

All aboard the cog railroad to the summit

by Brian Swartz

The 1,527-foot summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park became so popular by the 2020s that the National Park Service instituted a lottery system for people wanting to drive up the mountain’s access road from May to October. Only 140 years earlier, visitors could reach Cadillac’s summit by train — and once there they could eat and stay in a woodframed hotel accessed by a carriage road.

Cadillac was then called Green Mountain, and in the early 1880s hardcharging Bangor businessman Frank Clergue bought the Green Mountain Hotel and secured land to build a railroad up the mountain. He “quietly, but legally” pursued organizing his railroad, according to a Bar Harbor history.

Clergue hired A. F. Hilton, a civil engineer, to find the best way up the mountain. Hilton “spent the months of December, 1882, and January 7, 1883, prowling over the sides of Green Mountain.”

Capitalism and geography limited the possible routes. To recoup his investment, Clergue needed paying passengers, and Bar Harbor had tourists galore during the summer. Otter Creek and Seal Harbor to the southeast and southwest, respectively, of Green Mountain, did not. Dorr Mountain barred railroad access to Green from the east. Although the railroad could extend up the mountain’s southern slope from Otter Creek, few summerfolk stayed there. Green Mountain’s steep west slope above Bubble Pond excluded that approach.

After examining “several suggested routes,” Hilton recommended a hybrid: Wagons would carry Bar Harbor visitors to Eagle Lake’s north shore, where they would board a small steamer and cross the lake to a railroad landing on the east shore. The train would carry them to the mountaintop.

The steep grade prevented Clergue from building a standard-gauge railroad, so he opted to build a Mt. Washington Railway-style cog railroad with a gauge of 4 feet, 7½ inches. Clergue already figured that the Maine Railroad Commission would approve his project (the official “okay” came in winter 1883), and he contracted with Bangor-based Hinckley & Edgery to manufacture two passengers cars.

Clergue started construction that spring. Cutting ties from trees harvested along the right of way, his workers set the ties in place and laid down the rails, which were bolted through the ties into the granite bedrock. Sometimes the workers bolted the rails directly into the rock.

During the project, Clergue housed his workers in the Green Mountain Hotel rather than transport them daily from Bar Harbor. A locomotive arrived at the Portland docks and reached Bar Harbor via the Stella Lee, a schooner. Workers then hitched 14 horses and hauled the locomotive “to a point between West and Cottage Streets.” Once the engine’s wheels were installed, the locomotive was moved to Eagle Lake, with workers carefully winching the engine over rough sections of road.

The locomotive reached the lake’s north-shore landing on April 21, 1883. Richard Hamor, from whom Clergue had purchased the hotel, used his scow to transport the engine to the railroad landing.

Clergue bought a “stern-wheel steamer,” the Wauwinet, to carry passengers from landing to landing on Eagle Lake. It being land-locked, there was no saltwater route over which the Wauwinet could steam, so Clergue had the little ship hauled by winch and cable 2½ miles from Bar Harbor.

The project quickly took shape. Two women and their daughters were the first passengers on May 30. Clergue pulled out all the stops for his railroad’s June 23 grand opening. The chartered steamer Cimbria carried passengers to Bar Harbor that day; they climbed into a “horse-drawn ‘barge’” (also called a “bus”) to ride to Eagle Lake, boarded the Wauwinet, and enjoyed the short cruise across the lake to the landing where the train waited.

Clergue threw “a two-day gala party” and greeted people checking out his railroad. He established a set train schedule: The train made four daily round trips, and guests could dine at the hotel or stay overnight. Sparks from the train occasionally ignited fires on Green Mountain, but that was a cost of doing business, as far as Clergue was concerned.

He would not tolerate competition, however. He ordered gates installed to block traffic on the carriage road. “Naturally, these gates were pulled down,” so Clergue hired men sent from Bangor to set dynamite into holes drilled overnight into the carriage road. The dynamite exploded the next day and damaged the road. It was soon repaired, and islanders and summerfolk alike realized that Clergue had a dark side.

What he had not revealed were his (cont. on page 24)

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(cont. from page 23) plans to extend rail lines all over Mount Desert Island, all the way to Seal Harbor, Northeast Harbor, Southwest Harbor, and Bass Harbor. First, though, Clergue wanted to build an electric railway from the steamboat landing in Bar Harbor to Eagle Lake. The summerfolk who essentially considered Mount Desert Island to be their private playground hired lawyers Hannibal Hamlin and A.P. Wiswell to represent them at a Maine Railroad Commission public hearing held on November 3. nents,

The commissioners denied Clergue his electric railway. His Green Mountain Railway gradually lost business, then reached the point where revenue could not cover the creditors’ bills. As for the railroad’s assets, not much was left when the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department held a sheriff’s sale on January 16, 1893.

The locomotive went to the Mt.