Saving Maine
Bill Silliker Jr.
Throughout the 1920s, Maine Gov. Percival Baxter tried and failed to persuade state legislators to protect the remote wilderness surrounding Katahdin, the state’s highest peak. So starting in the 1930s, Baxter began buying the more than 200,000 acres himself, parcel by parcel, and turning them over to the state to be held “forever wild” for the people of Maine. Bill Silliker Jr.’s Saving Maine (Down East Books, $27) tells the tale of Baxter and those who followed his example, preserving large stretches of Maine’s wild coast, forests and rivers. Silliker’s rich color photographs capture what has been preserved, from the towering headlands of Acadia National Park (donated by the Rockefellers and other wealthy summer residents) to the great wilderness surrounding the St. John—the wildest river in the eastern United States—purchased in 1999 by The Nature Conservancy.
—Colin Woodard
