In 1930, former Maine governor Percival Baxter began buying land around Mount Katahdin; 32 years later, he had donated about 201,000 acres and left millions to keep them wild

Most Americans who love the outdoors probably don't realize how little private land in this country is actually protected forever. According to the Land Trust Alliance, privately owned land makes up 60% of the United States, but only 3% of it is protected for conservation. That gap makes one man's decades-long buying spree in the Maine woods feel almost remarkable today.

His name was Percival Baxter. He chose to buy and protect the mountain himself.

A wealthy Mainer who fell for a mountain
Percival Proctor Baxter was born in Portland, Maine, in 1876, into a wealthy family. His father ran a canning business and served as Portland's mayor. Baxter graduated from Bowdoin College in 1898 and later earned a law degree from Harvard. He never opened a law practice. Instead, he went into politics and became Maine's governor in 1921, serving until 1925.


Long before that, in 1903, Baxter went on a fishing trip near Mount Katahdin, Maine's highest peak. He fell for the place instantly. In 1916, he began pushing lawmakers to turn the Katahdin region into a park. A 1911 attempt to make it a national park had already failed. Baxter's efforts as a lawmaker didn't fare much better.

So he decided to just buy it himself.

He bought a mountain with his own inheritance
In 1930, the Great Northern Paper Company, which owned most of the land around Katahdin, was hit hard by the stock market crash. Baxter, no longer governor, used his own inherited fortune to buy nearly 6,000 acres around the mountain for $25,000. In 1931, he handed that land to the state of Maine for free, with strict conditions attached.

According to Friends of Baxter State Park, the 1931 deed stated the land "shall forever be used for public park and recreational purposes, shall be forever left in the natural wild state, shall forever be kept as a sanctuary for wild beasts and birds." He also banned any roads for motor vehicles inside the land he donated. That same year, the park was named in his honor.

That was only the start. Over the next three decades, Baxter kept buying land parcel by parcel and kept giving it away. He made his final purchase in 1962. By then, he had made 28 separate land gifts, bringing the park to roughly 201,000 acres, according to the official Baxter State Park website.

He didn't trust the government to keep his promise
Baxter refused to hand the land to the National Park Service. He said he did not trust the federal government to honor his "forever wild" promise. So instead of turning it into a national park, he wrote the rules directly into each deed and set up a separate body, the Baxter State Park Authority, to run it. Even today, Baxter State Park isn't managed like Maine's other state parks. It answers only to the rules Baxter wrote himself.

$7 million to keep it wild forever
Baxter never married and had no children. Over his lifetime and through his will after he died in 1969, he left trust funds totaling about $7 million to pay for the park's upkeep, the official Baxter State Park website notes. The goal was simple: make sure Maine taxpayers would never have to foot the bill, and commercial development would never creep in.

He once said something that sums up his whole outlook: buildings crumble, and wealth vanishes, but Katahdin would remain the mountain of Maine's people forever.

Why this story matters for young Americans today
For millennials and Gen Z watching wildfires, shrinking open space, and endless development eat into wild land, Baxter's story probably lands differently. He didn't wait for a government program or a corporate sponsor. Over 32 years, he spent his inheritance to lock in protections that have outlived him by more than half a century.

Today, Baxter State Park covers about 209,644 acres, according to the official Baxter State Park website, making it one of the largest gifts of land ever given by a single person in American history. There are no paved roads, no cell towers, and no chain restaurants inside it. Just Katahdin, forest, moose, and hiking trails, exactly the way Baxter wanted it.

In a country where, according to the Land Trust Alliance, private land protection still lags far behind what's needed, Baxter's mountain-by-mountain approach still stands out as a notable personal commitment to conservation.