Rudolph Ernest Brunnow

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Quick Facts

Significance:

designer and co-builder of Precipice and Beehive Trails, Bar Harbor Village Association Path Committee chairman 1912-1917

Place of Birth:

Ann Arbor, MI

Date of Birth:

1859

Place of Death:

Bar Harbor, ME

Date of Death:

April 14, 1917

Place of Burial:

Princeton, NJ

Cemetery Name:

Princeton Cemetery

Rudolph Ernest Brunnow served as the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association Path Committee chairman from 1912 to 1917. He is the primary designer of the Precipice and Beehive Trails, as well as many other historic trails in Acadia National Park.

While park founder George B. Dorr expanded the trail network in the Sieur de Monts Spring area, Brunnow was simultaneously involved in the construction of several of the most rigorous trails on the island. During this time he laid out the Precipice Trail and Orange & Black Path on Newport [Champlain] Mountain and The Beehive Trail. These routes, carefully designed to lead walkers through boulder fields and up precipitous cliffs, testify to the skill of Brunnow for laying our remarkable trails, much like the talents of his predecessors, Herbert Jaques and Waldron Bates. Like Door's memorial trails, Brunnow's trails held to high standards of construction with long rows of cut and uncut steps, yet contained much more iron work.  

Like Jaques, Brunnow concentrated most of his trail construction on Newport [Champlain] Mountain near his summer cottage known as "High Seas.' You can still see "High Seas" (private property) from Champlain Mountain today. Brunnow named the Orange and Black Path, built in 1913, after the school colors of Princeton University, where he was a Professor of Semitic Philology. The Precipice and Beehive Paths were funded by the Bar Harbor VIA, but Brunnow donated his own funds to the cause. Both trails were immediately popular due to the iron rungs and ladders but others complained that the increased popularity scared off eagles that once nested there. 

Brunnow's contributions to the trail system were cut short when he died suddenly from pneumonia in the spring of 1917 but he left behind some of the most challenging, controversial, and highly crafted trails in the Bar Harbor system. 

Brunnow was the only son of a German father and American mother. After his first wife died, he and his 5 children moved to New Jersey where he accepted a position as professor of Semitic philology (language studies) in 1908 at Princeton University. He first summered with his children in Bar Harbor in 1909.

Sources:
Pathmakers
Don Lenahan "Rudolph Brunnow and the Myths about Him"