Last updated: October 20, 2020
Place
Deer Brook Bridge
Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Joseph Korzeniewski, 1994
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Deer Brook Bridge (1925) was the sixth of 17 bridges constructed along 57 miles of carriage road on Mount Desert Island between 1917 and 1940. The bridge carries the Jordan-Sargent Mountain Road over Deer Brook at a waterfall near the north end of Jordon Pond.
It was the first bridge for which John D. Rockefeller, Jr. sought the approval of the National Park Service, founded just 10 years earlier, since he was building it on park land.
It is one of the few bridges in the carriage road system with more than one visible arch. The reinforced-concrete bridge, clad with quarry-faced, random-coursed ashlar granite, measures 78-feet long, and 22-feet 5-inches at its highest point. Two narrow (9-feet 8-inches) semicircular arches are separated by a 6-foot wide pier and outlined by slender radiating voussoirs. A 4-foot circular granite medallion located above the pier on the east facade is inscribed with the 1925 construction date. Both elevations display two slightly projecting belt courses.
It was completed in 1925 at a cost of $24,918.