From collection Creating Acadia National Park: The George B. Dorr Research Archive of Ronald H. Epp

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Bear Brook Valley and Quarry
Bear Brook Valley
and Quarry
the
of
a
Dromatic essay that rucely pairs the
economic potential of the beautifore with its
aesthetics/receivation potential.
The central feature of Bear Brook Valley is the broad
deep pool of water at the mountain's foot, fringed round to
the south and we st by remnants of the anoient forest.
This pool was created by the grinding of the massive over-
riding 100-sheet as its bobbom layers, with their stone and
gravel contents, blooked by the steep uplift of the
mountain, bored heavily into the rook below.
How deep it may ha ve been when the 100 went out,
I do not know, for the tdo-sheet left behind it, filling
the bottom, deep deposits of blue olay, so fine and clear
that I have, at the request of artists sent barrels of it to
New York and elsewhere for sculpture modelling.
This 1. asin was known in the village in early days
as the 'Cedar Swamp' and had SO long been a source of supply
of o edar for shingling that none of the great,broad-based
trees were left, when I first knew it, their slowly rotting
stumps alone remaining to tell the tale, with pools of
water between them where muskrats lived and herons came
and fished as they dtted upgradually through the summer.
2.
This pool had been for many centuries the home of
beaver, as successive dams across its outlet showed.
To drain it, for taking out peat for garden purposes
thirty-five or forty years ago, it was necessary toblast
into the encircling ledge to gain a five-foot depth below
the water surface, yet within the pool, not far beyond, I
was unable to reach the bottom, thrusting down through
the peat and soft blue olay at a depth of nearly forty
feet.
I placed a dam across the outflow I had
obtained by blasting and keeping the basin full as I
removed the peat, created a feature of extraordinary beauty,
with the forested mountain sides at noon or the sky at sunset
reflected from the pool's quiet surface, over which swallows
dart in swift pursuit of insects as the daylight fades.
3.0
Around the entire basin, marshland, pool and
woods, I built, in the eighteen-nineties at the haight of
the bicycling period, what was known as the Bicycle Path,
Passing through the midst of one of the rare bits of
primoval forest yet remaining and gtxdng
given
wood road breadth and character, it was widely used for years
but did not, as I had hoped it would, lead on to similar
construction elsewhere on the Island.
Later, after the bicycling period ended, the
path became, in its portion along the wooded mountain
foot, a favorite walk with older people, and in the
fall when the canoe and yellow birches had taken
on their golden autumn foliage, my mother used to dráve
through it in her light, one-horse open buckboard, taking
great pleasure in its beauty, with the sunshine flickering
through the leaves; and artists used it as a scene to
paint.
the
A
If any arrangement is made concerning Beaver
Dam Pool by which the road
Dam
from the mountain round the Headow is continued
Food
through it, such arrangement must included assurance
that what I stipulated for in giving the Long Field
in the way of and wild gardens planting down
the Long Field and across the Moadow will be honored
and carried out, both as to Path construction a purchase
of soil, and planting. The plants for this planting
to be grown by the Nurseries in the Nurseries and the
planting to be done by the Nurseries or under
it
their direction.
This is all clear; ##/only
needs some permanent assurance that It will be done.
How can this assurance be given? And how can it be
made a right and not a matter of favor, to be done or
not done as the years go byt This and similar work
and planting in Bear Brook Basin should be dealt with
as one continuous work, starting at the head of the
Long Field and continuing uninterruptedly across the
Meadow and through the Bear Brook Valley section as
far as to the quarry, with the Spring and Delano
wild gardens included.
As I have stated elsewhere in another paper,
I have already saved the Government from seventy
five to eighty thousand dollars, according to the
Federal Bureau of Engineers estimate in obtaining
for it the town's well based and solidly constructed
roadway, with great gain of landscape and practical
extension of the Park to include the whole Great
Meadow basin.
Ny plan for underpass beneath
the Country Road instead of what was proposed, to
the great injury of the County road by Mr. Olasted
and Mr. Rockefoller's engineers by crossing by
overpass at the foot of the Tern will, if the road
be continued save the ****!! Government, as much
again, that in, seventy five or eighty thousand
dollars more at the least, I told again by the
Bureau's engineers, for the route by the eastern sids
of the mountain will save, as against the route through
the
gorge
,
two
********* hundred thousand more.
In return for this I feel that I can fairly ask the
Government's cooperation, not meanly given, in carrying
out my own plan for the development of the land it
has received from me. and in whose wight development
I have so long taken interest.
GBD's
Bear Brook Quarry
1890's
I opened Bear Brook Quarry some forty years ago
to supply stone for the building of the Pulitzer tower,
the wall and parapet of the terrace which the house
opens onto above the shore and other work in rock
which the architect's plans called for after Mrs.
George Pendleton Bowler's estate of Chatwold had been
Pedityze
purchased by Mr. Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York
World.
The quarry was near, the stone lay in deep, out-
standing beds, easy to work, and much stone was needed
as the tower had to be built up from a depth below sea-
level to obtain a firm foundation, its base being made
into a swimming pool which filled itself naturally at
high tide and could be drained when the tide was low.
The whole work then carried out cost Mr. Pulitzer
a hundred and forty-thousand dollars and led to a law
suit, but it was profitable for the quarry and give it
reputation for the good quality of its stone which ex-
tended its use for other building.
2.
Two houses built of it at that time, using the
brown, oxidized, seamed surface of the quarry beds,
the Edgar Scott house on Cromwell Harbor and the
John Innes Kane house between it and the village,
still remain as two of the most beautiful and most
solid houses ever built upon Mount Desert Island.
Fred L. Savage, an excellent local architect,
A
was in charge of the work on these houses, the plans,
prepared by leading architects in Boston and New York,
hed David brook
calling for this stone, whose quality they knew, and
Mr. Savage did the work so well that I place the quarry
Bear
thereafter in his hands to operate, which he continued
Juney
to do till he died.
Afterward the building of new
summer residences at Bar Harbor coming to a stop, I
closed the quarry and being occupied with other matters
have never yet reopened it. But when later I gave my
land upon the mountain to the Trustees of Public Reser-
vations and they, later, to the Federal Government for
the Park, I expressly reserved for the quarry sufficient
rock for its future operation through many years.
3.
Granite now is coming back into use, power drills
have replaced the old hand drills, derricks are operated
mechanically and motor trucks have replaced horses,
creating great economies in the use of stone. There is
no more enduring building rock than fine grained granite
nor better monumental stone, as the old Egyptian monu-
ments show, with the inscriptions upon them as clear
as when first executed, after three to four thousand
years.
Bear Brook Quarry has lost no value through the
years since it was operated. If the Government shall
take it over for the purpose of its road, I do not
want it taken as a thing without worth.
I have taken
interest and pride in the good product it turned out
and the finely worked monuments to which the stone's
good quality lent itself. But it so happened that there
is no substiture for it as a road site if the Park's
continuous mountain-to-shore motor road is built, for
it occupies the corner where the road must turn and
where the first sight of the ocean bursts upon one
after descending from the mountain height. From the
quarry summit the road shown in the survey made by the
Federal Bureau of Roads, in preliminary study, runs
straight to its objective -- the eastern end of the old
Ocean Drive, near three miles away.
[G.B.DoRe]