Percival Baxter’s Vision
The following material is excerpted from Governor Baxter's Magnificent Obsession, A Documentary History of Baxter State Park 1931 - 2006, by Howard R. Whitcomb.
On an August day in 1920, Percival P. Baxter found himself crawling across a knifed-edge arete as he approached the summit of Katahdin, which rises out of the great north woods of Maine. He was part of an expedition of friends and political figures determined to preserve the highest peak in the State of Maine. The expedition’s itinerary included crossings of both the East Branch of the Penobscot and the Wassataquoik Stream and then the trek from Katahdin Lake to Chimney Pond. From Chimney Pond, Baxter’s party ascended the mountain via Pamola Peak and headed for the summit via the aforementioned arete. In those moments, on what came to be known as the Knife Edge, the magnificence of the mountain and its surrounding region was reaffirmed in the mind of the future governor of Maine, a sense that never left him. Upon reaching the summit, Baxter said, “I wouldn’t do it again for a million; I wouldn’t have missed it for a million.”
The indefatigable efforts of this twentieth-century visionary to preserve Katahdin as a wilderness area for the people of Maine covered the span of a half-century. Several years prior to Baxter’s death in 1969, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, himself one of that century’s leading environmentalists, wrote this tribute:
Percival P. Baxter is our foremost conservationist. He was a pioneer whose voice pleaded for wilderness values when exploitation was the theme of the day. Biologist, botanist, ecologist—he has helped educate two generations of Americans on the spiritual values of the outdoors, of free flowing rivers, of alpine meadows, of cold pure springs.
Percival P. Baxter’s Family, Education, and Political Career
Percival P. Baxter was born in Portland, Maine on November 22, 1876, the son of James Phinney Baxter and Mehitabel (Hetty) Cummings Proctor Baxter. His father was a prominent businessman (most notably with the Portland Packing Company), philanthropist, and six-term mayor of Portland. Neil Rolde stated in his joint biography, that James Phinney’s son, Percival, “not only inherited the wealth of his father. . . but also his father’s sense of public duty, philanthropic munificence, historic perspective, love of nature, and intellectual curiosity.” On his mother’s side, he was the lineal descendant of several colonial governors of Massachusetts and of John Proctor, a Salem witchcraft martyr.
Baxter, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bowdoin College, Class of 1898, studied law at Harvard, Class of 1901, but never practiced. He devoted himself to family business matters and public affairs. He served in both the state House of Representatives (1905-1906 and 1917-1920) and the state Senate (1909-1910 and 1921). As President of the Senate on January 31, 1921, he acceded to the governorship on the death of Frederick Hale Parkhurst, who had served only twenty-five days in office.
Governor Baxter was best known as a fiscal conservative and advocate of the state’s natural resources. When he left office, his most significant legacy was perceived to have been the protection of the state’s waterpower resources. In a poignant letter that had been placed in a time capsule in November 1924 and not opened until 2001, he lamented that he had not done more for his state:
“I leave office in a few weeks, cheerful and happy, but with regret that I can not do all the things I would like to do for my State and her People… What I am to do after retiring from the governorship is doubtful. I hope to continue to be useful and to do my part as a citizen. With health, position, and experience I ought to find some niche into which I will fit.”
Governor Baxter made no reference in this letter to his frustration with the legislature for its failure to create a park at Katahdin. However, it was that failed legislative proposal during his brief term as President of the Senate, and subsequently as governor, that charted the course for the remainder of Percival Baxter’s life. As a private citizen, he was determined to rectify what he had been unable to accomplish while in public office.
Initial Manifestation of a Vision for a Park at Katahdin
It is reported that Baxter first visited Katahdin in 1903. While the details of that visit are not known, it had a formative impact on the recent Bowdoin and Harvard graduate. The following year, he ran successfully as a Republican candidate for the state House of Representatives, beginning a career in public office that spanned much of the next two decades. By his own account, his interest in having the state acquire Katahdin as a park dates to his legislative service in the House of Representatives during 1917-1920.
In a preliminary draft of a speech delivered on January 27, 1921, Senator Baxter referred to an act for the establishment of the Mount Katahdin Centennial State Park that he had introduced in 1919. According to Baxter, that bill would have provided appropriations “sufficient for the immediate purchase of the mountain itself together with Katahdin Lake, a beautiful lake six miles away.” In that draft, he characterized the area in the vicinity of the proposed 115,000-acre park as consisting of 53% burned over timberland, 15% bare rock/stunted growth, 15% cut over, 12% virgin growth being cut, and 5% timberland under 100 years old.
The final text of the “Mount Katahdin State Park” address to the Annual Meeting of the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association in Augusta on January 27, 1921, contained a detailed recounting of the sale of vast portions of the state’s “wild lands”, including the notorious “State Steal,” during the administration of Governor Joshua L. Chamberlain in 1868. This segment of the speech provided Baxter with an opportunity to present his park proposal as a means of addressing this egregious loss of public land.
A much later characterization of these early legislative initiatives can be found in an article that appeared on the front page of the Portland Sunday Telegram and Sunday Press Herald on November 30, 1941:
"In 1905 as one of the younger members of the State Legislature I began to learn something of my native State, its people, its resources and its possibilities for the future. It was not, however, until 1917 that I attempted to induce the State Legislature to acquire by purchase the mountainous regions around Mt. Katahdin."
Similar remarks appeared in an article he wrote for the National Park Magazine in which he stated that upon becoming a member of the House of Representative in 1917 “[m]y plans began to crystallize and then and there I determined to have the State purchase what I consider the most spectacular and beautiful part of Maine, Mt. Katahdin and the surrounding mountainous territory.”
It is necessary to digress briefly and point out that the adoption of a substitute bill to that of Baxter’s park proposal in the 1919 legislative term, “An Act to Provide for the Acceptance by the State of Gifts of Land and for the Establishment of a State Park and Forest within the State of Maine,” proved to be fortuitous. The substitute bill allowed for donations of land to the state of Maine for public parks. That statutory provision would become the vehicle for the state’s acceptance of former Governor Baxter’s initial gift in 1931 of 5,960 acres, constituting much of the Katahdin massif.
Additional evidence of Baxter’s intentions of having the state acquire land for a park at Katahdin can be found in his personal correspondence. An early indication of Representative Baxter’s intentions is found in a letter of October 25, 1918, he received from an Acting Assistant Forester listing the largest landowners in the region of Mt. Katahdin. Also, in February and March of 1919 Baxter and Garrett Schenck, President of the Great Northern Paper Company, exchanged letters regarding the possible sale of lands to the state for the creation of a public reserve at Katahdin. Even though Baxter’s overtures to Schenck were spurned, Baxter remained determined to establish a park at Katahdin.
The Vision Crystallizes
During the summer of 1920, Baxter participated in an expedition to Katahdin organized by Patten lumberman Burton W. Howe. The trip was conceived as a way to promote Baxter’s proposal to create a state park at Katahdin commemorating the centennial of Maine’s statehood. The expedition included not only Baxter, the presumptive choice for President of the Senate, but also Charles P. Barnes, who was widely regarded as the leading candidate for Speaker of the House of Representatives when it convened in January. The expedition’s guide was Roy Dudley, the long-time game warden at Chimney Pond.
As noted earlier, the expedition involved the lengthy trek from Patten to Chimney Pond and the ascent of the mountain from two directions, via the Saddle Trail and Pamola Peak, respectively. Arthur G. Staples, the chronicler of the expedition, described Dudley’s party that included Baxter, as it crossed the “knife edge” toward the summit:
"These men of ours looked like pigmy figures, against the sky. They stood out on the ridge of that mountain just as they do sometimes in the 'movies' against a setting sun. Some were being led by the hand. Others were on their hands and knees. A strange picture that I will never forget."
After reaching the summit and musing about the prospects for Baxter’s Katahdin State Park proposal, the entire group returned via the Saddle Trail:
Our trip back to camp was wearisome—very. The exhilaration was over; the way deemed long; the flies larger; the brambles pricklier; the blow-downs more numerous. We passed a deserted cabin and rounded at last into the camp-fire's evening glow at Chimney pond, in the shadow darker and gloomier, under the spell of that mystic mountain that brooded over our little tent among the scrub growth.
Little did Percival P. Baxter know as he left Katahdin that mid-August day that the remainder of his life would be indelibly affected by this expedition. In the near term, he would return to Augusta where he would assume the presidency of the Senate when the 80th Legislature convened in January. What could not be foreseen was what was to happen almost immediately thereafter.
In anticipation of the re-introduction of his legislation creating a park at Katahdin, Baxter made two tactical moves designed to improve its prospects. First, using his prerogative as presiding officer of the Senate, he appointed his brother Rupert, a Senator from Sagadahoc County, to the Committee on State Lands and Forest Preservation, which would be considering the legislation. Baxter also facilitated arrangements for an illustrated lecture on Katahdin by William F. Dawson of Lynn, Massachusetts to be delivered on February 2, 1921. Furthermore, the proposal had received the endorsement of the state Republican Party in 1920 and Governor Parkhurst in his inaugural address in early January of 1921.
As planned, Baxter introduced on January 25, 1921 “AN ACT to Establish the Mt. Katahdin State Park” (80th Legislature, Senate No. 19). Two days later, in an address to the annual meeting of the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association in the Hall of Representatives, he stated that:
The proposed park covers an area of 57,232 acres and comprises the whole of Mount Katahdin, and Katahdin Lake, of itself one of the most beautiful of all Maine's lakes,... The park will bring health and recreation to those who journey there, and the wild life of the woods will find refuge from their pursuers, for the park will be made a bird and game sanctuary for the protection of its forest inhabitants.
He concluded the address with a ringing challenge to the corporate interests controlling the Katahdin region:
Maine is famous for its 2500 miles of seacoast with its countless islands, for its myriad lakes and ponds, and for its forest and rivers, but Mount Katahdin Park will be the State's crowning glory, a worthy memorial to commemorate the end of the first and the beginning of the second century of Maine's statehood. This park will prove a blessing to those who follow us, and they will see that we built for them more wisely than our forefathers did for us. Shall any great timberland or paper-making corporation, or group of such corporations, themselves the owners of millions of acres of Maine forests, say to the People of this State, “You shall not have Mount Katahdin, either as a memorial of your past or as a heritage for your future?''
The unexpected death of Governor Frederick H. Parkhurst on January 31, 1921 triggered Senate President Baxter’s elevation to the governorship. This unforeseen development dramatically changed the political fortunes of his park proposal. Dawson’s illustrated lecture scheduled for February 2, 1921 was cancelled, and in its stead legislators were filing past Parkhurst’s coffin laid out in the Capitol’s rotunda. Baxter, the newly inaugurated governor, was no longer in a preferred position from which he could orchestrate legislative deliberations on his bill.
Even though the proposal was rejected in the two legislative sessions that ran concurrently with his four years as governor, Baxter remained resolute in the years immediately after he left office that a state park should be established at Katahdin.
Baxter, the Private Philanthropist - (1931) Initial Gift of 5,960 Acres
In 1930, with Great Northern Paper Company under the new leadership of William A. Whitcomb, Baxter was able to acquire, with his personal funds, a 5,960-acre parcel in T3 R9 that embraced the major part of Katahdin itself. This would become the first of the twenty-eight parcels that Baxter would deed to the State of Maine. The deed of gift for the parcel, dated March 3, 1931, provides the first expression of Baxter’s intent:
... said premises shall forever be used for public park and recreational purposes, shall forever be left in the natural wild state, shall forever be kept as a sanctuary for wild beasts and birds, that no roads or ways for motor vehicles shall hereafter ever be constructed thereon or therein, and that the grantor, during his lifetime, retains the right to determine, and to place whatever markers or inscriptions shall be maintained or erected on or within the area thereby conveyed.”
As would be the case in subsequent Acts of Acceptance pertaining to the twenty-seven parcels gifted to the State from 1939 to 1963, the Deeds of Trust were incorporated in the Private and Special Laws of the State. The deeds were invariably accompanied by formal communications between former Governor Baxter and the governors and legislatures at the time of the respective gifts.
These Private and Special Laws and Formal Communications, consisting of 147 pages, are the primary sources used by the state’s appellate courts and attorneys general interpreting Baxter’s intent in creating Baxter State Park. They also provide guidance to the Baxter State Park Authority and park personnel in its management. Academics, journalists, and citizens will also find in them valuable insights as to Baxter’s vision as he progressively built the park over the course of one-third of a century. All of the Deeds of Trust, and their respective annotations, appear elsewhere in this volume. In addition, maps showing the progressive evolution of the park from 1931 to 1963 accompany the aforementioned annotations of the Deeds of Trust.
The National Park Controversy
Before Baxter was to deed his second and third parcels to the state in 1939, there arose a very serious threat to the newly established Baxter State Park. The election results of 1932 complicated the situation for the former Republican governor. With Democratic administrations in power in both Augusta (Governor Louis J. Brann) and Washington, D.C. (President Franklin D. Roosevelt), there was renewed interest in creating a national park at Katahdin. Despite Baxter’s aversion to federal interference, he accepted the assistance of what was to become the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which set up a camp in the Millinocket area. The State Park Division of the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Department of the Interior, coordinated the work of the CCC in the Katahdin area.
In 1934, the NPS undertook an exhaustive study of the recreational development of the Mount Katahdin region. The final report, completed in April 1935, rekindled the debate, dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, over the creation of a national park at Katahdin. As Park historian John Hakola stated, “along the way, the National Park Service became deeply involved in plans for the creation of a second national park in Maine.” The general scheme for developing the Katahdin region, according to the report, “should consist of motor roads skirting the base of the mountain for entrance, foot and horse trails for penetrating the interior, and adequate accommodations at studied locations.” Ambitious features included a motor road through the valley between Katahdin and the Turner mountains, a horse trail from Katahdin Stream up the valley between Barren Mountain and The Owl to the Northwest Plateau, and a lodge at Basin Ponds just outside the existing park boundary.
It is important to recognize that while this report was prepared under the auspices of the NPS, it did not recommend the creation of a national park. Rather, it foresaw supervision of a recreational area by state officials whose responsibilities would be similar to those of national park rangers. The costs of operation and maintenance were to be in large part offset by user fees. However, the development of the region was to be federally funded and the labor provided by the CCC.
During a 1936 visit to Maine, Dr. E. A. Pritchard, an Associate Recreational Planner at the NPS, asked Baxter his views about either the NPS acquiring land contiguous to Katahdin or taking over Baxter State Park as a portion of a larger area to be made into a national park. Baxter responded by letter:
If your Park Service wants a National Park in Maine there is available much land and many lakes and streams in Washington and other counties, with no state Park to restrict and limit your purchases. . . . Do allow me, with the assistance of old “Father Time," to handle this matter as I have planned, for what has been accomplished here has been done only after a long and tiresome contest, absolutely single-handed and in the face of abuse and bitterness that you would not believe possible where a man is merely trying to do something worthwhile for his Native State.
An even more damaging development during Baxter’s overseas trip in the winter of 1937 was the introduction of legislation by U.S. Representative Owen Brewster to create a Katahdin National Park. The enabling legislation provided a ten-year window during which the federal government could secure these lands with public or private donations. The legislation prohibited the purchase of land with public funds. A literal firestorm ensued upon the former governor’s return; and for the next year, he engaged in a determined lobbying effort to defeat the legislation. Brewster, sympathetic to the concerns of Myron Avery and the Appalachian Trail Conference, wrote Baxter on April 19, 1937 and spoke of the “increasing influx of visitors” and stated that the NPS was more appropriately suited than the state to provide proper protection and development of the Katahdin region.
Baxter left no stone unturned as he doggedly lobbied the other members of Maine’s congressional delegation, personnel in the Department of Interior, including Secretary Harold Ickes, and leaders in the environmental community to insure that his deeds of trust were not violated. Baxter was quick to confide in John L. Baxter of Brunswick. In a precautionary letter of April 14, 1937, he entrusted his nephew with the relevant correspondence. He stated: “Nothing has disturbed me for a long time as much as this and although I feel confident that while I am alive and well nothing can be done, of course something might happen to me and then Brewster might accomplish his purpose.” Governor Baxter attributed Brewster’s motives as “first to injure me and second to get some political advantage by being instrumental in having a National Park in Maine.”
In an interview with the Portland Press Herald on May 3, 1937, Baxter went public with his objections to Brewster’s “national park” proposal:
Katahdin should and must always remain the wild, storm-swept, untouched-by-man region it now is; that is its great charm. Only small cabins for mountain climbers should be allowed there, only trails for those who travel on foot or on horseback, a place where nature rules and where the creatures of the forest hold undisputed dominion. As modern civilization with its trailers and hot dog stands, its radio and jazz, encroaches on the Maine wilderness, the tune yet may come when only the Katahdin region remains undefiled by man.
Baxter prevailed. The legislation died without action being taken in the 75th Congress, and the Brewster bill was never reintroduced in subsequent congresses. Several years later, in a letter to William A. Whitcomb, President of GNP Company, Baxter asserted: “In all modesty I can say that had it not been for my opposition, Brewster’s bill would have become law.”
Learn more about Percival Baxter’s forever wild vision on our history podcast, Baxter and Friends.