The story
How an island that outlawed cars ended up with one of the country's great scenic drives.
You're on a road this island once tried to make impossible. Mount Desert voters banned the automobile in nineteen oh three, and in nineteen oh nine the state legislature backed them up. Some locals were arrested just for coasting their cars down a hill. The bans ended in nineteen fifteen, and this road was started a few years later, with no grade over seven percent. Up ahead the road divides. The signs you want are the ones for Sand Beach.
Photo: Jet Lowe, Historic American Engineering Record (HAER ME-17), public domain · Public domain