Acadia Partners’ Mission - Part 2: Who Do We Thank?
This is the second of a series of three short writings that talk about Acadia Partners’ mission. The first piece focused on the place where Acadia Partners is located, since Acadia Partners’ mission is rooted in the importance of place. This second installment looks at the question of who we have to thank for preserving this place and keeping it available to the public.
Molly the Dog and I love our walks up to Schoodic Head. Along with the rocky shore and Schoodic Point, it is a place that inspires love and attachment. The connection to the place is what keeps so many people coming back here, summer after summer. It is part of why many of us make the Schoodic Peninsula and the towns that surround it our home–a place to live and work.
The place where Molly and I walk is in Acadia National Park, which means that I can have some confidence that it will continue to be there, as an undeveloped place, for the rest of my life. That is a good feeling, and I have the Federal Government and the National Park Service to thank for this assurance about the place’s future.
But things are more complicated than that. I mean, it is not like Acadia National Park was the government’s idea–not even close. If I am going to be thankful for the existence of this Park where I love to walk, I need to thank some summer people too–in particular George B. Dorr, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Charles W. Eliot.
It was Eliot, retired from the presidency of Harvard College, who first organized an association to begin acquiring lands on Mount Desert Island. He was concerned that the rapid increases in private land ownership in the last years of the 19th century would put an end to public access to beautiful places on the Island. His son, who was also named Charles Eliot and who was a world-renowned landscape architect, died of spinal meningitis before he reached the age of 40. In the late 1890s, the younger Charles Eliot wrote that
“It is time decisive action was taken, and if the state of Maine should…encourage the formation of associations for the purpose of preserving chosen parts of her coast scenery, she would not only do herself honor, but would secure for the future an important element in her material prosperity.”
The elder Eliot, a long time summer resident on Mount Desert Island, wrote a biography of his son after his death. Coming across this statement in his son’s writings, he decided to act on it and formed the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations for the purpose of “…acquiring, owning and holding lands and other property in Hancock County for free public use.” Subsequently, it was George Dorr who managed the process of land acquisition, leading to the donation of the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations lands to a National Monument and then a National Park. And it was John D. Rockefeller Jr. who assisted in completing the Park that we know today.
So, I have wealthy summer people to thank for the preservation of this place, along with the Park Service and the government.
But, when it comes to the places where Molly and I walk on Schoodic, I also need to thank one particular native of Steuben. According to an article by Winter Harbor historian Allan Smallidge, John Godfrey Moore was born and educated in Steuben and Cherryfield, moving to New York when he was 18 to work in the lumber business. He had his own business by the time he was 21, and made a good bit of money, which he turned into a lot more money as an early entrepreneur in the telegraph business.
As a wealthy man, after touring the world, Moore held on to his connection to this place. He returned to the Schoodic area, built a large cottage on Grindstone Neck, and acquired large amounts of other land in the area, including the land at Schoodic Point. According to Smallidge’s history, Moore
acquired the land because of its beauty, noting that there was nothing he admired more than a mountain, “especially when an ocean goes with it.”
Moore built roads that crossed Frazer Creek and then wound along the shore to the Anvil. He also built a road to the top of Schoodic Head. Part of the trail that Molly and I walk each morning is along roads first built by John G. Moore in the 1890s.
Moore clearly loved this place, as I do. But love takes different forms in different people. In the case of John G. Moore he wanted to share his love by building a grand hotel on the top of Schoodic Head.
Moore died before he could bring this particular expression of love to fruition. Although I share his attachment to Schoodic, I also recognize that the quiet, undeveloped character of the place, which makes it attractive to me and to others today, might have been changed if Moore had lived to see his plans through. There is an element of paradox here. If John G. Moore had not acquired all of the lands on Schoodic Point, we might not have a National Park there today, and the lands could very well be closed to the public. But, had he continued with his plans to develop the area, we might also not have a park
The tension between developing land for more intense use, on the one hand, and leaving it relatively undeveloped, on the other, is present in a great many of the natural resources decisions that we face today. It was, in fact, present in the question of what to do with the former Navy base that is now the Schoodic Education and Research Center. It is a question faced by communities all along this part of the coast. There is no simple answer–there are different benefits and outcomes tied to the different decisions about natural resources use.
John Godfrey Moore’s wife and daughters had less connection to the place–less love for it, perhaps. So, when George Dorr entered into talks with them about acquiring the land to make it part of the National Park, they were willing sellers. So, Molly and I also owe thanks to Louise Leeds, John G. Moore’s widow, for being willing to let go of the land at Schoodic Point, passing it into the hands of the government.