Bubble Pond Bridge

Bubble Pond Bridge is a 1928 rustic arch on the Bubble Pond Carriage Road, beside the pond’s shore parking area. It’s a quick stop for anyone curious about Acadia’s carriage-road engineering. The old motor-road section beneath it was abandoned after a realignment between 1962 and 1964, so this is a look at a historic crossing, not a motor-road route.

An unreinforced concrete core sits beneath rough-dressed, randomly laid rubble stone. The bridge is 75 feet long and 20 feet high at its highest point; the elliptical arch spans 31 feet. Look for the 1928 date carved into the keystones on both sides, then trace the arched parapets, stepped wingwalls, and projecting stone scuppers. For a photo, frame the dated keystone and the arch curve together to show both its age and shape.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. planned a carriage-road crossing over a new motor road he was funding. Architect William Welles Bosworth submitted two designs, both judged too formal or too citified for a national park. The final version was a roughly quarried, rustic stone design, and Rockefeller agreed to fund it. Engineer Paul D. Simpson prepared the working drawings; Philadelphia mason Pringle Borthwick built the bridge in 1928. It was the tenth of 17 bridges constructed along 57 miles of Mount Desert Island carriage roads between 1917 and 1940.