Carriage Road, Acadia National Park, Maine

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Acadia National Park's carriage roads form a network of roughly 45 miles of broken-stone byways winding through the forests, valleys, and mountainsides of Mount Desert Island on the coast of Maine. Financed and directed by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., they were built between 1913 and 1940 so that people could travel by horse and carriage through the island's scenery, free from the automobiles he wanted kept off them. Motor vehicles are still prohibited today, and the roads are shared by walkers, cyclists, horseback riders, and, in winter, cross-country skiers. The roads were carefully engineered to follow the contours of the land, with gentle grades, sweeping curves, and deliberate vistas opening onto lakes, ponds, and the surrounding mountains. Rough-cut granite blocks line their edges as guardrails, affectionately nicknamed "Rockefeller's teeth," and seventeen stone-faced bridges, each with its own design, carry the routes over streams, gorges, and park roads. The construction drew on traditional European road-building methods, with layered stone and careful drainage that have helped them endure for a century. Being on the carriage roads is a quiet, unhurried experience. Paths pass beneath spruce, birch, and maple, skirt places like Eagle Lake and Jordan Pond, and climb toward open granite slopes with views toward the sea. Autumn brings vivid foliage, while summer mornings are cool and fragrant with balsam. Maintained today through the work of the National Park Service and the nonprofit Friends of Acadia, the roads remain one of the finest examples of broken-stone road construction in the United States and a defining feature of the park.