"The other outdoor sport of the time was buckboard riding. There were several livery stables here…
In the afternoon, summer visitors…would hire these buckboards, first having to send a small boy with the message because there were no telephones then, and would drive to all parts of the island - Bar Harbor, Jordan Pond, Bubble Pond, and even to the western side of the island. People were so keen on driving that they would sometimes take the "J.T. Morse" in the afternoon to Southwest Harbor, hire a team there, and drive all around the western side of the island. Then they would hire some kind of motorboat to bring them back from the Claremont House in the early evening." - Mount Desert - An Informal History Edited by Gunnar Hansen, section written by Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 182-3 - 1989.
"The buckboard deserves particular mention, as being the vehicle best suited to the roads of the island. The first buckboard was rudely fashioned out of two pairs of wheels with a couple of planks stretched between them, and seats nailed or tied on the planks. But it has developed wonderfully, and some of the buckboards of the present day are marvels of the builder's and painter's arts. Many of them are now shipped to all parts of the country for people who have first seen the vehicle here. The gentle swaying motion of the board while traveling at full speed over the hilly roads is simply delightful; and no person who has ever ridden on one wishes to use any other kind of vehicle during his stay." - A Guide to Bar Harbor published by W.H. Sherman, p. 34 - 1897.
“Early buckboards were constructed out of two pairs of wheels with wooden planks attached between them. One to four seats were commonly attached to the planks. The crude buckboard evolved into the more refined examples that survive today…
A buckboard ride is amazingly comfortable because of the spring action of the planks away from the axles. – Charles Morrill 11/04/07.
Before the arrival of buckboards a wagon ride was a bumpy affair. In the 1820s, the Abbot Downing Company of Concord, New Hampshire developed a system whereby the bodies of stagecoaches were supported on leather straps called "thoroughbraces", which gave a swinging motion instead of the jolting up and down of a spring suspension (the stagecoach itself was sometimes called a "thoroughbrace") - Wikipedia.
“At the four corners of the frame [of a Concord coach] were firmly braced S-shaped iron standards. At the upper ends these connected with the iron “shackles” that held the heavy leather straps, or thorough braces, on which the body of the coach rested.” - “Wagons, Mules and Men: How the Frontier Moved West” by Nick Eggenhofer, published by Hastings House Publishers - 1961 - p. 161.
“The invention and perfection of the steel spring brought out a rash of vehicles designed for short-distance travel… In the post-Civil War period especially, spring carriages were produced in mounting proportions, with the buggy and the surrey most popular and numerous and the phaeton a close third; in the West, the buckboard rivaled the buggy in popularity.” - “Wagons, Mules and Men: How the Frontier Moved West” by Nick Eggenhofer, published by Hastings House Publishers - 1961 - p. 131
The buckboard “had a slatted bottom, which acted as a kind of spring, besides having a spring seat.” - “Wagons, Mules and Men: How the Frontier Moved West” by Nick Eggenhofer, published by Hastings House Publishers - 1961 - p. 133
In their heyday, it was not uncommon to see dozens of buckboards parked “at the ready” near resort hotels, train depots and ferry piers. The majority of tourists arrived by steamship and needed transportation once on Mount Desert Island. Buckboards pulled by up to four horses were available for hire at most livery stables. These stables quickly realized transporting groups of as many as twelve tourists around beautiful Mount Desert Island was lucrative business. These horse-drawn tours continued longer here than at most resort communities because cars were banned from Mount Desert Island until 1915.” - “Collection Corner: Bar Harbor Buckboard” by Greg Cuffey - “Down The Lane” Skyline Farm Newsletter, June-September 2006, Accessed online 11/01/07; http://www.skylinefarm.org/newsletter.asp
W.H. & H.E. Davis were brothers who took over their father’s business in 1880. They made a specialty of “improved” buckboards. In addition to their workshop in Ellsworth, the Davis brothers had premises in Bar Harbor, a fashionable summer resort.
