Buying 87,000 Acres of Land Was Easy. Giving It Away Was a Lot Harder
The co-founder of Burt’s Bees waged a long war to protect a swath of Maine forests for public use. Now visitors can find it.
A log footbridge leads to a pond near the town of Patten in Maine’s northern woods.
Photographer: Craig Dilger/The New York Times/Redux
It’s like that philosophical question about whether a tree falling in the forest makes a noise if no one’s there to hear it. In this case, does an 87,500-acre recreational area in Maine’s North Woods exist if there are no road signs to help visitors find it?
“The governor wouldn’t let the signs go up on the interstate, so unless you knew it was there, you didn’t know it was there,” says Roxanne Quimby, the 69-year-old co-founder of Burt’s Bees and donor of those acres to the federal government. “And if you knew it was there, you didn’t know how to get to it.”