Henry David Thoreau, America’s naturalist laureate, visited the Maine woods in 1846. It was then the frontier, much of it virgin woodland. Though not the first, but among the earliest white men to climb Katahdin, and record it, Thoreau was in awe. The Maine Woods, the book he wrote about these trips has a chapter on the mountain. He wrote of Katahdin, “I looked with awe at the ground I trod on…. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor arable, nor waste land…. It was the fresh and natural surface of planet Earth.” Ktaadn, Thoreau’s spelling of what he heard Abnaki call it, is an awe inspiring mountain for its great relative altitude and the wilderness around it. But these have also been the source of the mystery and myth that surround Katahdin. In 1879, while spending August and September in Maine, living outdoors to restore his health, a young Harvard senior, Teddy Roosevelt, climbed Katahdin. It is said he spoke of the experience ever afterward. Roosevelt would become a prime moving force in the national conservation movement that brought about many of America’s national parks. As Baxter began his legislative career in at the beginning of the 20th century a conservation movement was under way in the country. He was elected to the Maine senate in 1909. As a lawyer, state senator, governor, and businessman he was in a unique position and uniquely qualified, to realize his dream of a north woods state park that would preserve Mount Katahdin. In The Maine Woods Thoreau wrote, “The Kings of England formerly had their forest ‘to hold the kings game,’ for sport or food, sometimes destroying villages to create or extend them…why should not we, who have renounced the king’s authority have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may exist, and not be ‘civilized off the face of the earth.’ ” During the 1920 Maine election, a Mt. Katahdin Centennial Park proposal was made. Frederick Parkhurst won the governorship that year, but after one month in office, Parkhurst died. The president of the Senate, Percival Baxter, was therefore his successor. Percy began his efforts to have the state establish a park around Katahdin. Baxter had models for the kind of conservation he sought. He very likely had read what both Thoreau and Roosevelt had written about the mountain he had first seen in childhood while on fishing trips with his father. There have been a lot of businessmen, and many state senators in the state’s history. What made Percy Baxter the right man, in the right place, at the right time? The Baxter family has deep roots in New England. Simon Baxter came to Hebronm Connecticut, from England in the late 1600s. Simon’s grandchildren fought in the Revolutionary War. One of Simon’s great grandchildren, Elihu, born in 1781, moved north where land was still plentiful. He trained to be a doctor in Hanover, N.H. At twenty-five Elihu married Clarissa Simms, who two years later, before having children, fell through thin ice and drowned while on horseback crossing the Connecticut River. A year later he married Sarah Cone, with whom he had 12 children.
After 20 years, Dr. Elihu again moved the family, this time to Stillwater, Maine, now Orono. He bought large tracts of land in what was at the time virgin territory. They soon moved again, however briefly, to Levant. Dr. Elihu did some farming and bought more land. Restlessness brought him to move again, this time to a farm on China Lake in 1837. The following year he moved the family again, settling in Portland, where they remained. James Phinney would grow up with interests in literature, the theatre, and art. An avid reader, his physician father urged him to find an occupation. At 18, he went to work in a Boston law office to learn the law, but soon gave that up out of boredom. Back in Portland he bought an interest in his brother William’s hardware store. His first commercial success was to produce a catalog that other Maine hardware dealers could order from, about 70 years before L.L. Bean. Phinney was hitting his stride. He married had in 1854 and had four children. When the Civil War started in 1861 there was an immediate surge in demand for his hardware products. He traveled to Europe to find enough suppliers. In 1863, Phinney established a business in a new industry—canning food. The first factory was in Oceanville, on Deer Isle. He and his partner started canning lobsters. Demand immediately soared, and other factories were built in Gorham, Westbrook, and Winter Harbor. The state for the first time considered lobster conservation measures. But it was canning corn that became the company’s biggest seller. The Civil War, and later the rapid growth of American cities fueled demand for canned food. By the 1870s Phinney Baxter’s Portland Packing Company had 25 factories canning vegetables, fish, and meat. Baxter’s first wife died in 1872. He married Hetty Proctor a year later. They had two daughters, and two sons, one of them, Percival, was born in 1876. James Phinney Baxter was 48 years old and a wealthy man. Phinney invested in real estate and banking, and had a vision for the city that he helped shape with the donation of land for the eastern and western promenades, and other city parks. He entered politics, serving as Portland’s mayor for six terms. The youngest of six boys and two girls, Percy was the closest to his father. He went to Portland High School, Bowdoin College, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1898. He returned to Portland to work in his father’s business, serve in the state senate, and as governor. In business and politics Percy befriended, and at times did political battle with, the business and political leaders of the state. As a state senator and later governor he knew well what was going on in the state among its big players—the timber, paper, and water power companies. James Phinney died in 1921 leaving most of his estate to Percy. That same year Percy began what would be a 48-year effort to preserve Mount Katahdin and the land around it. He began by trying to convince the state to buy the land to create a centennial park. He was opposed by the real estate lobby who wanted everything potentially to be for sale. Big corporate landowners cried socialism while receiving tax breaks and land for railroads. Political opponents opposed it for politics. One group or another, including the Appalachian Mountain Club and other outdoors organizations, along with the federal government, threw down obstacles. Baxter eventually decided he would buy the land himself and give it to the state—with conditions. In 1931, he began buying parcels of land. He had an opportunity to buy a parcel that included Mount Katahdin in 1931. That first parcel was 6,500 acres. The country was sliding into the Depression and the Great Northern Paper Company president needed money. Baxter bought that first parcel that included the mountain for $25,000. From there on it was seeking, waiting, dealing, politicing, and trading to build what became his life’s work. While he could have spent his time and money building a bigger summer mansion or a bigger yacht, the notoriously thrifty Percy committed himself to something he planned to give away. Over the years he spent assembling the parcels of land that would make up the park, he still had to deal with a range of opponents. There was opposition to purchases in the northeast from hunters. They were accustomed to having access to the land, and feared losing it. This was also the case later in the southeast corner. In both cases Percy’s political skill and flexibility led to a deal. Those areas were left open to hunters. The big landowners in the north woods, the timber and paper companies, in their way, inadvertently had been preserving the north woods. Their interest was in cutting wood, not land speculation fueled by development schemes. This situation had existed for generations, but Baxter knew enough about business, politics, and society to realize it would not always be so. Once the wilds of the woods are developed they are gone. Percy’s understanding of these realities accounts for the way he planned the long-term management of the park. He carefully worded how the park would be managed. In the end there were 28 separate parcels that he had given the state to create the park. The most important fact in this transaction was how Baxter gave the state this land. It was given “in trust,” that is, it was given in exchange for the land being managed forever as Percy Baxter specified. This was written into the agreement with the state. State parks are usually subject to the will of the people through the legislature, and goals can change, including the sale of parklands. However, Baxter, lawyer that he was, sought to protect the resource forever. That, said Baxter State Park director Jensen Bissell, makes Baxter State Park “one of the most durable entities in our society.” This says a lot in a society that bulldozes prime farmland and forests by the many thousands of acres each year to put up sprawl. Baxter wanted to preserve the natural state of the woods. No motor vehicles are allowed, there are few roads, camping is simple, and attention to the condition of the park is rigorous. Many of the trails up the mountain are steep and rugged. They are basic, not very constructed trails. Financial support of the park is solely from the endowments Percival Baxter left to the park from his personal wealth. No legislative assistance, no tax dollars, are used to support the park. Revenues from camping fees and non-resident fees generate income. Baxter set aside 30,000 acres for scientific forestry management. He wanted exemplary sustainable forestry management practices developed on this acreage. Harvests in this part of the park produce about 10 percent of the park’s operating revenue. The park’s governing body, the Baxter State Park Authority, is composed of the State Attorney General, the Director of the Maine Forest Service, and the Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Baxter said he wanted three managing parts so that one could watch over the other two. The last parcel he bought for the park was in 1963, six years before he died at the age of 93. About 60,000 people visit the park every year. Of those, 1,200 hundred are hikers who have hiked the length of the Appalachian Trail, from Springer Mountain, Georgia, which ends 2,200 miles away at Baxter Peak on Mt. Katahdin. With a carefully crafted plan of how it may be used, the park remains a place where all can get some sense of what our earliest European ancestors, the native Americans, and whoever came before them had experienced, surrounded by miles and miles of deep woods without trinket shops and snack bars. The value of that may be immeasurable. For those who value it, the experience can be an elixir for the malaise of modern life. Building the park he would give to future generations, became his life’s work. Percival Baxter’s love of Maine, his determination, foresight, and generosity has made us all Percy’s Heirs. |
