The Homan's trail has always been a special trail for me because it is one of the first abandoned hiking trails I discovered. The Park Service abandoned it many years earlier and rediscovered it in recent years. The trail was spruced up (mainly this required the removal of huge tree's that had fallen across the trail) and the trail was reopened as an official trail.
When the Park service reopened the Homans trail, they added a short new section of trail at the trails end, connecting it to the main hiking trail up Dorr Mountain. The Homans Trail does have stone steps, but not nearly as many as the main trail most people use to hike Dorr mountain, and the Homans Trail gets you up the mountainside quicker.
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| Dorr Mountain - Acadia National Park |
It also has two features you will not find on any of the other hiking trails on Dorr Mountain, shortly after you start your hike you come to the first one, a hole in the rocks, sometimes called the Donut Hole, where hikers have to bend down to fit through the hole. Once you come out on the other side of the rocks, the trail turns sharply to the left and stones steps rise upward, leading you around a couple of corners when the second feature of this trail greets you.
The trail ahead would of simply passed between two tall walls of granite, but George B. Dorr came up with a great idea, he had a huge slab of granite placed over the two walls, in effect creating a cave or tunnel effect in the middle of the trail.
Just a little further on the trail reached the top where the trail once ended. Here the trail turns to the left and goes on for a short distance before connecting with the main trail so many hike.
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| Homans Trail - Acadia National Park |
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| Dorr Mountain Homans Trail - Acadia National Park |
Once you have hiked the Homans Trail, you will most likely ask yourself the same question so many others have asked, what in the world was the Park Service thinking when they abandoned this trail? Thankfully it has been reopened and we can all enjoy its
So how do you find the Homans trail? I will make it really easy, drive to Sieur de Monts Spring/Wild gardens/Nature Center - either by route 3 just beyond Jackson Lab or by way of the One Way Section of the Park Loop Road.
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| Dorr Mountain Homans Trail - Acadia National Park |
Once at the Sieur de Monts Spring parking lot, park and head to the far end of the parking lot - there is a gated fire road there. Walk down the fire road and in a short time you will come to a four way intersection. The fire road continues straight ahead, and to the right is a boardwalk -the Jesus Trail.
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| Map of Dorr Mountain, Acadia National Park |
The Park Service has always insisted that the Homans Trail was never completed and that it simply came to a dead end. If you look at old maps, this simply is not the case, the Homans trail always connected to the Emery Trail. In recent years the park reopened the Homans Trail, but claimed they added a section of trail to connect it to the Emery trail, yet that section was already there, though overgrown in places, as the old map below shows.
THE HOMANS TRAIL
