If the drive up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park seems precipitous today, imagine riding a narrow-gauge railroad up the mountain 112 years ago.

Thanks to Frank Clergye, an entrepreneur whose visions outran his funding, that’s what tourists did for about a decade, beginning in 1883.

Back then, a privately owned toll road ran from Bar Harbor to the summit of Green Mountain, later renamed Cadillac. Tourists often hired horse-drawn teams for a day’s excursion up the mountain, where a three-story hotel with a cupola stood on the peak. After ascending the toll road, tourists stayed at the hotel, which was coincidentally owned by the same people who owned the access road.

With many people gripped by railroad-building fever, Clergue decided that a narrow-gauge railroad could take tourists to and from Green Mountain. He bought the maintenance-neglected hotel and a narrow 200-acre tract extending from the hotel to Eagle Lake.

After the Maine Legislature granted Clergue a charter to build and operate the Green Mountain Railway, he designed a cog railroad similar to that running up Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Crews started clearing the right-of-way in February 1883, stacking the felled timber for later use by the train.

Clergue’s line ran from a wharf on Eagle Lake to the hotel. The track bed was built from cross-laid timbers, to which the rails were bolted.

Clergue brought to MDI a small steam locomotive, named the Mt. Desert, and a steamer, the Wauwinet, that was somewhat larger than the famous Bon Ton ferries plying the Penobscot River between Bangor and Brewer. A 14-horse team pulled the locomotive from Bar Harbor to another wharf on Eagle Lake. Clergue had the locomotive set on a scow, which then ferried it across the lake to the GMR wharf after “ice-out.”

The Wauwinet connected the two wharves, carrying passengers and employees either way. Land-based transportation routinely brought tourists to and from Bar Harbor hotels to the steamer wharf.

The first-paying passengers rode the railroad to the Green Mountain summit on May 30, 1883. A two-day grand opening took place June 23-24; to bolster patronage, Clergue hired a steamer to bring passengers to Bar Harbor from Bangor.

Just as the GMR picked up passengers four times daily intown, so did the train depart the summit four times, the last trip leaving at 4:20 p.m. Anyone who did not board the “last train from Green” either stayed the night at the hotel — or walked to Bar Harbor via the unlit carriage road.

Clergue apparently enjoyed a boom year in 1883, but his railroad’s fortunes declined in 1884. The toll road still attracted many excursionists; fed up with people visiting the summit without using the facilities at his hotel, an angry Clergue dynamited part of the road. He also proposed building yet other railroads on MDI. Local resistance, plus outrage at his carriage-road sabotage, killed any additional railroad construction.

Meanwhile, Clergue did not adequately maintain his hotel, battered by the strong winds and gales that swept Green Mountain. Fewer tourists visited Bar Harbor as the “summer people” built cottages and mansions; these summertime visitors, who had a few months to explore MDI’s natural wonders, did not need to ride the GMR for excitement as often as did the tourists.

Sensing that the GMR would soon lose money, Clergue sold it. The line ran haphazardly until late 1892, when a heavy debt forced its closure. The GMR’s assets were sold on Jan. 16, 1893. The motel burned in 1895.