The Train at the Top of the East

In 1883, rusticators were hiking Cadillac Mountain — then called Green Mountain — in record numbers. So an enterprising local named Francis H. Clergue built a narrow-gauge cog railway to the top and charged visitors for a lift. The two-car train took a half hour to travel from Eagle Lake to the summit along a track just longer than a mile, gaining more than 1,200 feet. But business sagged as the novelty wore off, and five years later, a new carriage road stole traffic away (even though railway employees once tried to destroy it with dynamite). Today, stray metal spikes on Cadillac’s western face mark the former railway’s path.

_{Photograph courtesy of Maine Historic Preservation Commission}

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