Below Oak Hill in Tremont, the old Seal Cove Road ran past a string of small farms. The Norwoods came first, in the 1820s, and the Kelleys followed. For a hundred years they cleared fields, built walls, dug wells and buried their dead on a knoll above the road. By 1937 the land belonged to the United States. The woods have grown back over it, but the cellar holes, the wells and one gravestone are still there.
Before the state roads, this was the main way between Southwest Harbor and Manset on one side and Seal Cove and Bass Harbor on the other. A Bar Harbor Times writer who walked it in 1960 said the old roads here were "laid out well before 1850 and have fallen into disuse in the 1930's" (Bar Harbor Times, 4 Aug 1960). Along the way he found the farms by their cellar holes, "marked by the inevitable lilac bushes, which seem to thrive in desolation, and the apple trees, which don't" (Bar Harbor Times).
The farms sat on two of the island's numbered lots, 87 and 88, running back from the road toward Oak Hill. The 1880s atlases mapped the road and its houses (1881 Colby Atlas of Hancock County). The crew used the 1887 Colby and Stuart map, which names households such as T. O. Norwood, G. M. Kelly and N. B. Kelley, to match each name to a hole in the ground.
Historian Kim Sebold did the same thing in 1998, when a lilac bush in these woods led her to Samuel Norwood's cellar hole, as shown on the 1887 map; it is the easternmost site on this page (Sebold, "Lilacs, Cellar Holes, and the Courthouse," Maine History, 2004).
Each lettered pin is a homestead or burial place. The small dots are what the crew recorded around it in 2015 and 2022: cellar holes, wells, walls, dumps and old roads. Switch the base to LiDAR to see the ground under the trees. Click any point for its field note.
From west to east, roughly in the order you would pass them walking from Seal Cove. The house names come from the 1880s maps and the deeds; the crew's field names are kept in the map notes.
The westernmost house, right at the edge of today's park. The crew found a cellar hole about 15 feet square and a cluster of shallow dug wells or springs, one lined with rock. A blue glass fragment and a mortised sill log lay nearby.
A house aligned about 95 degrees, with a fallen-in foundation about 12 by 30 feet, a square 10 by 12 foundation, a pile of chimney brick and stone walls on two sides. The crew's 2015 notes call it the William Norwood place; the deeds say Willard. The 1937 park master plan marks a ranger camp here and the 1941 plan a ranger station, and the crew found a piece of barrel and stovepipe beside the old cellar. This is the probable site of the park's Seal Cove patrol cabin, shown in the map detail and photographs below.
The prints are not dated or located beyond "Seal Cove." The crew places the cabin at the Willard Norwood place because an old park map marks "Ranger Cabin" just north of the road here, the 1937 west-side master plan marks a ranger camp, reached by a lane from Seal Cove Road; LaRue Spiker's 1960 Bar Harbor Times article mentions a park ranger cabin on the road; and a piece of barrel and stovepipe still lies on the ground near the old cellar. The cabin was log built and probably stood beside the foundation rather than on it. When it was taken down is not yet known.
The best preserved of the farms. The cellar walls of squared stone still stand chest high in places. There is a well with a pipe leading northeast, a round stone-lined hole 20 feet across, a pit by the northeast corner of the house still half covered with old boards, and a large dump behind it with bottles, jugs and pieces of automobiles.
On a knoll north of the road, a single white headstone stands among stone walls that once edged the Norwood fields. Nearby the crew found rows of evenly spaced pines, likely planted on the old fields.
The Kelley family burial ground lies on the north side of Seal Cove Road about 0.8 mile from Route 102 (VF Thomas, Tremont cemeteries). From here an old road ran south to Kelleytown. The crew also found the corner between Lots 86 and 87.
A foundation just off Seal Cove Road with its dump a little to the east. George M. Kelley took Lot 87 in 1860, and it stayed in the Kelley family until it was lost to mortgages and foreclosure around 1919.
A depression that is probably the cellar hole, a stone wall running off at 150 degrees, a T where two roads met, and a very deep well lined with stone that still holds its shape.
A cellar hole, a possible filled-in well, a long rock pile and a wide spread of old bottles and cans. This is the Samuel Norwood house, recorded by the crew as "S Norwood Est.", where a lilac led Kim Sebold to the cellar hole in 1998.
The headstone reads "MARY, wife of Jonathan Norwood, DIED Nov. 20, 1846, Æt. 57." The day is worn; it may be the 29th. That puts her birth around 1789. Under the dates is a verse:
The relics of departed worth
Lie shrouded here in gloom
And here with aching hearts we mark
Our own dear mother's tomb
The Tremont cemetery survey places Norwood graves on a knoll north of Seal Cove Road about 0.7 to 0.8 mile from Route 102 (VF Thomas). That is a different place from the Norwood Cemetery on Richtown Road. The deeds suggest Jonathan married again: when his estate was settled in 1857, a 30-acre dower lot was set off for his widow, Margaret.
The crew traced every deed for Lots 87 and 88 at the Hancock County Registry (crew abstract of Lot 87 and 88 transactions; key to the lot map). The two lots took different roads to the same end.
Lot 87 passed from Benjamin Norwood to Joseph M. Kelley in 1847 and to George M. Kelley in 1860, then down the Kelley family. Mortgages in 1911 and 1914, and a town tax lien in 1917, ended in foreclosure, and the lot went to Fred Walls in 1919 and 1920.
Lot 88 was Norwood land. Jonathan Norwood deeded part of it to Oliver and Samuel Norwood in 1839. After mortgages and defaults in the 1840s, Jonathan's estate was sold at auction in 1856. In 1893 a deed still called 40 acres of it the "Homestead lot on which they now live." Willard Norwood bought the 35-acre dower lot in 1881, and it passed to Amanda Norwood and then by will in 1921. The main part of Lot 88 changed hands several times after 1903 before Fred Walls bought it in 1918.
On 18 January 1937 Fred Walls sold both lots to the United States (Hancock County deeds 655/274). The southern parts of Lot 88 joined the park much later, in 1993 and 1995, through the Nature Conservancy.
The park did not leave the place empty at first. The 1937 master plan marks a ranger camp at the Willard Norwood place and the 1941 plan a ranger station, and the crew found a patrol cabin site, a possible ranger camp and the path to them. Two archival prints labeled "Patrol Cabin – Seal Cove" show the log cabin that probably stood there (see the photographs). The 1944 aerial photograph shows the fields still open and a small building in a clearing to the north. The same years brought the CCC picnic ground on Oak Hill just above (Pine Hill and Oak Hill; NPS Multiple Property Documentation).
After that the road went quiet and the forest returned. When the Bar Harbor Times writer came through in 1960, the farms were already lilacs and cellar holes. Another Times piece, LaRue Spiker's "Seal Cove Once Knew Life Of Economic Activities, Faint Memories Remain," recalls the busier days (Spiker, Bar Harbor Times).
These sites are on park land north and south of Seal Cove Road, which is a public road with private homes along it. The T. O. Norwood site lies right at the park's west edge, so stay on the park side of the boundary posts there, and don't use private driveways for access. Cellar holes and wells can be deep and hidden by brush. Look and take photographs, but leave every stone, bottle and fragment where it lies, and treat the graves with care.
Field photographs by Les Heilakka, August 2015 and August 2022. The 1944 aerial photograph and the 1941 plan detail are copies in the Lost Trails files. Lot map, field notes and GPS points by the Lost Trails crew, 2015–2022. Modern owners are not named.