Maine

Photo by photo, discover the stories that have been made along Maine's stretch of Appalachian wildneress.

Maine native Myron H. Avery recruited friends from Washington, DC; Maine forest and warden service personnel; guides and sporting camp operators; and the Civilian Conservation Corps to extend the Appalachian Trail through Maine, despite questions of whether it would be possible to carve a trail through the state's wildlands. Volunteers of Maine's Appalachian Trail Club, created by Avery in 1935, have since maintained the trail, built shelters, relocated more than half of the original hastily constructed route, and taken on the task of managing the trail's protection corridor. Along Maine's Appalachian Trail illustrates the rich history of the trail's rugged mountains and vast forests, which have provided a livelihood for generations of workers and communities.

Baxter State Park is the guardian of this vast wilderness area for all to enjoy. Baxter State Park and Katahdin draws on rich collections of archival images dating back to the 19th century.

The character of Baxter State Park and the great mountain at its heart can be powerfully conveyed through two words: forever wild. The mountain was known as Ktaadn, or ""the greatest mountain,"" to native peoples who first frequented Maine's interior northern forest. They were followed by colonial adventurers who explored its cirques and massive granite walls, by those who studied its geology and flora and fauna, and later by loggers who came to extract the virgin timber from nearby valleys. Finally, recreational climbing and camping led to an effort to protect the rugged beauty of these mountains, lakes, and valleys. When calls for preservation went unheeded, former governor Percival P. Baxter, beginning in the 1930s, purchased some 201,000 acres over a period of 30 years and gifted them to the state.

Seal Harbor and Acadia National Park are areas rich with history and natural beauty.

Several hundred photographs, taken by Seal Harbor's original residents, inspired this pictorial history of the well-known resort and surrounding Acadia National Park. A perusal through Revisiting Seal Harbor and Acadia National Park will reveal to the reader the natural beauty of the area, through views that attracted early rusticators and created such dedication from the island’s summer and winter residents that Acadia National Park was born. The pages within trace the community’s history, from its humble beginnings as a small fishing hamlet through its metamorphosis into a Victorian-era summer resort, and on through the park’s development, an economic boon for the island’s residents. From images of a time filled with sweeping Victorian dresses, grand yachts, and wildwood hikes, to accounts of the area’s prosperity in the 1910s and 1920s when the area had become synonymous with the Rockefeller and Ford names, Revisiting Seal Harbor and Acadia National Park invites the reader to take a lingering look into the lives of early islanders and summer visitors.

Founded in 1961 at Sieur de Monts Spring in Maine's Acadia National Park, the Wild Gardens of Acadia display, preserve, propagate, and label native plants in areas simulating natural plant communities. The gardens, which originated from a competition in growing native plants sponsored by the Bar Harbor Garden Club, continue to be developed and maintained by volunteers in partnership with Friends of Acadia and Acadia National Park. Each of the gardens" 13 habitats, ranging from mountain to beach to bog to deciduous and coniferous woods, displays plants native to the park. Since the founding, countless park visitors have come to the gardens to identify plants they have seen on walks or hikes or to learn more about cultivating native plants. Many of the images in this book are drawn from the extensive photograph collection of the Wild Gardens of Acadia.

Baxter State Park and the Allagash River covers two spectacular areas in the northern Maine woods. Baxter State Park, with more than 200,000 acres, is the largest park in the country purchased by one individual, former governor Percival P. Baxter. The park includes Mount Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail and the highest peak in Maine. Breathtaking photographs portray the scenic Allagash River, which was designated a wilderness waterway in 1966 by the Maine legislature. It was the first state-managed river area in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System in 1970. Included in this volume are stereoscopic photographs of Mount Katahdin from the early 1870s. This mountain, sacred to the Native Americans, has an atmosphere that is masterfully conveyed in the extraordinary photographs used in this history. The Allagash River is portrayed as it was before the wilderness waterway was created. Baxter State Park and the Allagash River chronicles the progression of the river and park from lumbering, hunting, and fishing to its eventual preservation and tourism.