In the 1970s, Roxanne Quimby raised twins in a Maine cabin without electricity or running water; after building Burt’s Bees, her family donated 87,500 acres and $20 million

Roxanne Quimby did not grow up dreaming of forests. She grew up dreaming of paintbrushes. But an art degree, a Volkswagen van, and $3,000 in savings led her to the Maine woods instead. According to Yankee Magazine, Quimby and her partner, George St. Clair, arrived in Maine in 1975 and used their combined savings to buy 30 acres of woods near Guilford, where they built a cabin by hand. Decades later, she would hand over 87,500 acres of that same wilderness to the American public. This is the story of how a broke artist became one of the biggest land donors in US history.

A one-way ticket into the woods
Quimby grew up in Massachusetts, the daughter of an engineer father and a homemaker mother, according to Forbes. She enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1960s to study painting. By the mid-1970s, city life had worn her out, so she packed her Volkswagen bus and drove east with St. Clair, looking for cheap land where she could live simply. Yankee Magazine reports that the pair settled in Guilford, a small mill town in central Maine, because land there was going for as little as $100 an acre.

Life without power, water, or a plan B
Building a cabin can sound romantic. Living in one for years without electricity or plumbing is probably not. According to Forbes, the couple hauled their own drinking water and heated their home with wood they chopped themselves, and money was so tight that Quimby cycled through waitressing jobs to get by. In 1978, Quimby gave birth to twins, Lucas and Hannah, according to Yankee Magazine, and raised them in that same rough-hewn world while her art career quietly faded away.

How candles turned into a lip balm empire
Everything changed when Quimby met a local beekeeper named Burt Shavitz in 1984 near Lake Wassookeag. He had extra beeswax, and she had the time and skill to make things. They began making candles and polishes, selling them at a local crafts fair for a few dollars each. According to Forbes, the pair made $200 on their first day. The small candle business grew into Burt's Bees, a household name in natural skincare, and in 1991 the company introduced the lip balm that would become its signature product. By 2007, Quimby had sold her remaining stake in the company to Clorox in a deal reported to be worth several hundred million dollars, turning a woman who once had no running water into one of the wealthiest people in Maine.

From beeswax fortune to a national monument
Instead of retiring quietly, Quimby did something unusual. She started buying back the wild Maine land she loved, piece by piece, with a long-term goal in mind: turning it into a national park near Mount Katahdin, the northern end of the Appalachian Trail. It was not an easy sell. The region had depended on the paper and logging industry for generations, and many locals worried a park would threaten local jobs and traditions. Quimby's son, Lucas St. Clair, spent years having honest conversations with residents to bring the community on board, according to the National Park Foundation. The effort paid off. On August 24, 2016, just before the National Park Service turned 100, President Barack Obama designated Katahdin Woods and Waters as a national monument, the 413th site in the national park system. The Quimby family donated 87,500 acres of land and pledged a $20 million endowment to help run and build the park in its early years, according to the National Park Foundation. It also notes that she focused on land around Mount Katahdin, the terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and enlisted her son, Lucas St. Clair, to speak with residents wary of losing paper-industry jobs.

A gift worth more than money
The monument today spans forests, rivers, and mountains once used mainly for paper production. It is also a certified International Dark Sky Sanctuary, the first of its kind in New England, according to DarkSky International, meaning its night skies are protected from light pollution. The land also carries deep meaning for the Wabanaki Nations, the Indigenous people who have lived in the region for generations, and the park now works to include their history in its programs.

Why this story matters to young Americans today
Quimby's story may resonate with people in their 20s and 30s. Many young Americans already feel priced out of land, unsure about long-term wealth, and anxious about climate change and vanishing wild spaces. Quimby's path shows there is no single script for a meaningful life. Chose to live without electricity, built a business from candle wax, and later gave much of it away for public land that anyone can visit. Katahdin Woods and Waters is not behind a paywall or a gate. It belongs to everyone, which was exactly the point.

For readers who feel pressure to have everything figured out by 30, Quimby offers a different example. She was in her mid-sixties before her biggest gift to the country was complete. Some of the best legacies simply take time to grow.