Baxter Pines: A Governor's Gift to Portland
Near Portland, Maine
Percival Proctor Baxter served as governor of Maine from nineteen twenty-one to nineteen twenty-five, but his most lasting gift to his state came from his own pocket, not the statehouse. Baxter spent decades buying land and donating it to Maine for permanent public use. His greatest achievement was the two-hundred-thousand-acre wilderness park north of here that bears his name.
But he also gave smaller gifts, including this grove of pines to the city of Portland, donated to be held in trust forever as a municipal grove and bird sanctuary. That phrase, forever, appears in Baxter's donations again and again. He was insistent that land once given to the public could never be sold or developed.
In a century when open land has been steadily consumed, Baxter's stubborn generosity looks more prescient with every passing decade.
