Memoirs of G.B DORR 1916 - 1929 Mr. Dorr's address at the Building of Arts on August 22, 1916, in celebration of the establishment of the Sieur Arts. de Monts National Monument. He was presented by President Eliot, who, with others also spoke. Mr. Dorr "Mr. Chairman: My thought turns forward, rather, to the great opportunity that springs from what is now achieved, than back toward the past, save for the memory of those I would were here to be glad with us at this first stage Vision attained. It is an opportunity of singular interest, so to devel op and preserve the wild charm and beauty of a spot Parger thus honored by the Nation that future generations may rejoice in them yet more than we; and so to conserve, and where there is need restore, the wild life whose native haunt it is that all may find delight in it, and men of science a uniquely interesting field for study. "For both purposes we need more land, as anyone may see by studying the Park and Reservation bounds on Dr. Abbe's wonderfully illiminating relief map. We have begun an important work; we have succeeded until the Nation itself has taken cognizance of it and joined with us for its advancement; let us not stop short of its fulfillment in essential points. Adequate approaches to the National Monument, which men and women from the country over will henceforth come to see, should be secured. The areas adjoining it that are fertile in wild life-- exceptional forest tracts, wild orchid meadows and natural wild-flower: areas of other type, the pools haunted by W later-loving - birds, and the deep, well-wooded and well-watered valleys that lie between the mountains -- are necessary to include in order to make the Park that it should be, a sanctuary 2. and protecting home for the whole region's plant and animal life, and for the birds that ask its hospitality upon their long migrations. Make it this, and naturalists will seek it from he whole world over, and from it other men will learn similarly to cherish wild life in other places. "The influence of such work, beneficent in every aspect, travels far; and many, beholding it, will go hence as missionaries to extend it. We have a wonderful landscape, to deepen the impression, and, now that the Government has set its seal of high approval on it, wide publicity will be given to all that we accomplish. "By taking the opportunity given us by the richly varied topography of the Island, by its situatio on the border between land and sea, by the magnificent beginning made, and the Government's co-operation, we can do something now whose influence will be widely felt. And here I wish to say a word which falls in singularly well with the thought of the far-reaching influence this work may have. Charles Eliot, Dr. Eliot's older son, was a landscape architect of rare ability and enthusiasm. Moved Eliot by a public spirit that he derived alike from his own nature and the home influences that helped to form him, he initiated in Massachusetts the sustem of Public Reser- vations on which our own was modelled. To him Mount Desert owes that debt of leadership, while he, in turn, might never have been awakened to the value and importance of such work had it not been for the inspiration, the love of nature and the quickened consciousness of beauty, drawn from boyhood summers passed upon it. During the early summer, when I was at Washington working on this matter of the Park's establishment and was plunged for weeks together in its oppresive heat, it struck me what a splendid and useful thing it would be if we could provide down here, in a spot SO full of biologic interest and unsolved biologic problems, so rich in various beauty and locked around by a cool northern sea, a summer camp -- some simple summer home for men of science working in the Government Bureaus, in the musuems and universities. They would come down to work, as Henry Chapman and Charles Sedgwick Kinot used to do, on a fresh field of life, bird or plant or animal, and then go back invigorated, ready to do more valuable work the whole winter through in consequence of this climatic boon and stimulating change. 3. This is one opportunity. Another, which is urgent, is to secure now, while it may be done, tracts of special biologic interest not yet secured, irreplaceable if lost in private ownership or through destruction of their natural conditions, as well a: adequate approaches to the National Park, con- venient and scenically worthy of the national possession to which they lead. Bot of these are essentially important at this time. No one who ad not made the study of it which I have can realize how ruly wonderful the opportunities are which the creation of this Park has opened, alike in wild life ways and splendid scenery. To lose by want of action now what will be SO precious to the future, whether for the delight of men or as a means to study, would be no less than tragic. 'Do not, therefore, look on W hat has been accomplished as other than a first step attained upon a longer way, which whould be dollowed only the more keenly for the national co-operation that has been secured, the national recognition won. 4 # Kebo Mountain, a long, narrow ridge which prolonged Flying Squadron Mountain northward for half & nilo with Kebo Brook dividing it, the valley which Kebo Brook flows down to the west ward of the Kebo ridge, is just wide enough for the Brook and an old woodroad which runs beside it, between the Brook and the ridge. The ridge ends abruptly bold throughout, and the brook sweeps round it on the north where on old all stood when I first remember it, in 1868,beyond the brook and mill there was an open field, continuing on across Crossell's Harbor road, to form the original nine-hole Golf links of Kebo Valley Club. Eastward of the ridgo # lovel woodland extends to Harden Farm where, cleared and turned into a hayfield where the deer now como out end grase at dusk, it falls away to join the Great Headow. This whole eastern side of the Ridgo above the farm and woodland is clothed where the cracks permit with original forest whose many hard wood trees, too irregular in growth for Kumbering in the early days,when the mill was operating, turn their foliage to beautiful, brilliant color in the fall. c Altogether it is a place that I have always loved, near to reach in the early days and leading on to one of the most picturesque climbs on the Island up the green Mountain gorge between Cadillac and the Flying Squadron where Kebo Brook comes tumbling down magnificently after heavy rain. It was one of the first spots I set about to secure for Bublic reservation obtaining the greater portion of the ridge itself in gift from the Lynse family in Boston, heirs of an early summer visitor to Bar Harbor who bought it with no thought of building, for its beautys sake and the near olimb it furnished from the village. This all, as far as Harden Farm,was part of what I turned over to the United States to preserve in beauty and In freedom to the publio/the land first offered them for a National Monument. The roadland was new and I was anxious that nothing but what would lead to the best development, permanent as that development would be, should come from it. Henoe by welcoming the opportunity Mr. Rockefeller's withdrawal from revise construction gave me to fittles, supported by the Fed. Bur. of Rds engineers, the original plan, Both roads gained by it, motor road and horse road alike, and will add each in its own way distinot and beautiful features to the National Park. been the work accomplished, 3 work could not DOOR ulse accomplished the work that has been accomplished in this way night never perhaps have been else done, and it has been admirable work, opening splendid views, completing the Park's ownership of the whole group of mountains, individual and beautiful, on the western side of Somes Sound, building Park roads and burning en enormous amount of dangerous slash left everywhere from cutting which sooner OF later, leftuneared for, musb have swept that have swept that whole portion of the Island,destroying beauty for long years to some. And the work done along.such linest under Mr. Dow's direction with welfare labor has been suplimented and equalled by labor from the Southwest Harbor CCO camp, admirably situated half a mile back from the northern end of Great Pond. There is much else I would 11kc to but for what has been accomplished sent up CT thanks, hoping in the true sense of gratitude morey yet more, maj follow and nothing of all this would have pappened had we not been on the lookout for opportunity, ready to work for them and ready to take advantage of them when they cames 60. We at: Acadia, Mr... told me, were among the very few in the whole Park Service who took advantago of the Government's lands purchase policy, itself the result of the dep ession and people's need. ###/#####/ One other thing set in motion during those Inst winters in washington though it did not come past till some time later was the transference # from the Department of Commerce to the Department of the Interior for inclusion the Park of the old fish breeding station at Green Lake where considerable stream comes in, frowing down from mountainy ponds, one of the head waters of the Union:Rivor. Same fifty years ago when Bugene Hele and James G. Blaine were all powerful it Washington and wanted to make themselves solid with their electorate to do things for their home State, among other things they had two fish-breeding stations established in Hancook County the one one on the Mountainy Pond stream following into Green Lake and so into Union River and the other at Orland on stream nowing into the Penobacot. The purpose wee to try which of the two was the better and develop that o ftsh breeding station. Ethe Orland station proved the better and the Green Lake Station was presently abandoned so for as operation of ft was concerned but it remained still owned by the United States and under the direction, 11 direction it be called where there was note, of the Department of Co heree. A Vartime's veterans association of Bangor tried to get it given to them by the government for an outing ground, enlisting the aid of Senator White, who appreciated the votes which they could give him at election time. This, he found, could not be done but he did obtain them several a several years! lease which put an obstacle in Ty way for getting it transferred to the Park. For this, needed an act of Congress although no payment was required in transferring the property from one Department to another, for the station was hold by the Department 40 of Commerce, Bureau of Fisheries, and because of this and Senator white being on the Department of Ca norco ittee I went to him to enter the Bill to make a transfer, which he did not to do but on account of the Veterans stalled on it and made delays. This went on for some three years or more, then former Govern- or Browster was elected representative from our distriot and I took the matter up with him and quickly got it through without Senator White knowing it was done, his Secretary representing him to some one from the district as on the job regarding it but encountering difficulties, long after the transfer had been made and all was settled. F What I wanted the Green Lake Station for was to serve not only for rearing young trout, bred at the other station, till they should be big enough to look out for themselves when turned into fishing waters but to serve as the nuoleus of what I have hoped night prove an extensive wild Life Reservation which could be added to, beingin a wild forest region, as opportunity might come. Mountainy Pond is owned by on association of University Porfessors and mon of science who have camps there where they come for summer. Last year a fire broke out there in a dry time and the whole region would have been swept had it not been for the help the Park was able to give. Betweenour Green Lake tract and Mountainy Pond they tell mo there is a magnificent stand of old yellow birch, owned by a lumber company and to be sometime out but which I should greatly like to save is possible, for the stand 18 primovel and there are none others like it that I know of in the region. TXXX Our saving these and the Mountainy Pond lands and campa as well was due wholly to our having the labor of a motor ccc camp available for fire fighting. Mount Desert Island is too thickly peopled in and indeed at all times, for any extensive wild Life Reservation being set up upon it but the Green Labo Mountainy Pond region with its forest background lends itself admirably to this and the lands have Isttle value once the woods are out, till a now growth has came, which will not be for many years. So, IS there be any divide, the land thing might como of it. Something did but not until the fall, when hearing that ft had taken on new light after laying dorment through the summer, I wrote to Mr. not to let E matter drop and got then immediate action, the sending of a man to look ow? territory over and report upon Ly lands. It started slowly but the result was greater than I could have hoped. I put en old South- west Harbor friend of mine and collaborator (T) in the acquisition of Park land upon that side of the sound, ...In charge and presently Mr. Clarence E. Dow, ****** The Mount Desert/f manager until be entered on this job, was joinded with Mr. Clark in the negotiation with the native owners for their land, a matter requiring not a little tast and understanding of the the people's obaracter but which was conducted by then wwwwirg together to signal success, extending and completing the Park's ownership on that western side to e splendid fulfillment. It wes-the first time and the only time that land for the Park had been purchased by the Government ell else.,has been continbuted. And this was not all for the depression continuing, welfare work was set up to develop in the Park interest, the lands thus purchased and Kr. Dow was appointed in charge of this, the amount expended so being large as has also Entrance of the motor road from Great Pond Hill he bought for the purpose of his road construction and-hold until recently, when he conveyed it to the Government for the Park. But all' beyond it to the foot of Jordan Pond came to the government through our original gift, and with it also the whole of Kebo Mountain with the land around of it New to Harden Farm where the new road takes its course, with a single exception, a projecting angle of the golf links land which the road must cross though scaree a hundred feet in width where it makes. its crossing. This land was of no use to the Golf Club, whose linko eid not cross the brook and it was valueless for any other purpose, but it had to be bad and Mr. Rockefeller ########### purchased it for some small sum through Mr. Harry Lyman acting as his logal agent. Lynam, always-alvery exact man in business ways, with the illness Apon him already of which he soon after died, omitted to record the deed and Mr. Rockefeller could not rurnish good title to the land, Mr. Lynen discovered when he came to draw title up for the Government. It seemed a simple matter, the Golf Club having been payed its price, to get a statement from it to confirm its sale, but this its directors refused to AB give. And thereby hanga another tele. when I gave up, because I could not get the necessary endowment for it, my wild Gardens project and had the land I had secured for it OA NY hands, the best use I could put the greater portion of it to, I thought, was to use it. in obtaining for Bar Harbor a second nine-hole Golf Linka adjoining,*Well across the road, the old one to be used with it oither singly or together as a championship course. To offered bring this about I with to the Town one-third of the land required, on condition that it should issue its long-term bond for ten thousand dollars to put the twelve to fourteen arres I would convey into good golfing condition and contribute them to the Links. The Town hold a special meeting to take action on my offer and accepted it unamimously. with 2 this to start with I offered the remaining land at cost. To explain the situation, when I formed, Dewitt Cuylor aiding, the Second Nine-hole Course, the Golf original Kebo Valley/Club directors, though they went behind hand every year on their expenses, would take no part' In making it a rull course; they were content to keep it in their own hands, and taking only whom they chose among their friends, and it was its policy which led the Town and the rest of us to take : interest in starting it upon a broader basis, The movement initiated by EV gift of land and the Town's cooperation in raising funds for making a Golf Course over the lands I gave, Dewitt Cuyler called a meeting at the Pennyylvania Reflroad offices in New York, he being & director of the Road as a central point toget summer residents together, and formed a now Association - The Bar Harbor Golf to Association -/put the project through. Funds were raised to take over the remaining two-thirds of the necessary land and what it had cost me and some besides, the balance of what was required put these two-thirds into good golfing state, some fifteen thousand dollars, being advanced to the Association by Hr. Cuyler, who took a mortgage on the land they bought to secure the loan. I then got a leading New England Golf expert professional, to come down and stay with DO that following spring and lay out the Links. It was beautiful location, the lay was favorable, and excellent. This done the original Kebo Valley Golf Club which had refused to cooperate, took the links over, adding to their own, and established contests that brought fame and money to the Club which took on now life. But its debt to Mr. Cuyler for the advance which he bad made remained and when be died a few years later was taken over with additional security furnished by the original Kebo Velley Golf Club on its Clubhouse and original nine-hole course, by a ghiladelphian named Ketterlinus, a summer resident, who was made president not for distinction on the links or socially but that he might help finance the OF JECS two 6 Club, which he did by adding another five thousand dollars to Mr. Cuylor's loan, which he took over on the. O-ample security. Then presently he also died when it was found,that instead of wiping out,as had boon Hoped and expected by his follow mombers.the.Club's indebtedness in return for the honor of the\Presidency, he had left everything he owned at Bar Harbor with a fortune in millions besides, to a nephew in Philadelphia, who promptly demanded payment of the mortgage, now twenty thousand dollars, on the Golf Club, land and buildings, my own gift to.the Sown ⑉ excepted. This was the situation when ,Mro Lynam purchased the little triangla of woodland across the brook and unused by the Golf Club, for the new motor road. Mr. Lynam wrote the circumstance of his failure to record and the Club's refusal to affirm the sale, since the land, sold with Mr. Ketterlinus' knowledge and consent, the sale being made before be died, 11 legal confirmation of the sale was lacking, was subject to the general mortgage. 6 Mr. Rockerfeller never answered or acknowledged Loveter and w Lypen who In ortgage on thiroois value, softiest Smoot volum its acti being forced to take the shortgo *PL titi or leone itablendo Crid elumouse bount the Ifen discharged/oley presented the lind to : be Rederal Governawal and that bit of Great this of it, itn back as they do to precord, 200ml Consulte boon doto alse of Common Loan or pels 0.1 abrus stated stem STANDAL SCAP 7. Mrs. Rockefeller's purchase of Harden Farm, essential to his project, was made at a fortunate time. It had been held by its owner an Farmer Harden's heir Ellsworty capitalist who took it over/by foreclosing of a mortgage for Fifty thousand dollars, a price not out of keeping with the boauty of the site it offered for a summer residence in Bar Harbor's boom-time period. But he had died and his heirs were quarroling over the property he left and sold It for one-half the own, five hundred dollars an aoro for fifty acres, the only traot bordering on the Headow which I had not myself secured. I was interested, for I had a traot myaelf adjoining it still better fitted than It for summer residence, which was included in the land I sold to Nr. Rockefeller but would gladly have kept myself had he not desired it. There were no more beautiful lands than these, no more attractive in every, W&J, the shore apart, EXAM in all Mount Desert Island. My own site, were it rightly developed with AWAY true landscape art,was the more beautiful with a wonderful southern view and giant primoval pines. It was partnof NY wild Garden tract, #ftl which offered limitless opportunity If developed with intelligence and understanding art. It is a ourious thing that the whole boom-time of Bar Harbor, so active in speculation, should have left the whole Great Meadow's area with its wonderful landscape opportunity practically untouched. The Great Meadow would have made a wonderful lake at slight expense for damming and the sacrifice only of a few old pines and hemlooks which younger trees would have in time replaced, But -no one had the wit to see it when the opportunity existed in Bar Harborts early days. Little would have and been sacr&ficed to make it save the Spring, that would have been a real loss. Fore it not for that the Government could do it now and but for that I would advise it. Rightly planted around it could have been made a feature of supreme interest and beauty. 47 I The Great Meadow ground out by the over-flowing ice-sheet thousands of feet in thickness, as its bottom was arrested by the granite mass of Mount Desert Island's eastern mountains and ground deep into the underlying rock by the onward movement toward the sea of the panderous, unimpeded mass above. All the principle lakes on the Island, unless perhaps Jordan's pond, were made that way including Somes Sound Fiord. The Great Meadow accordingly has & lake-like character and a lake it must have been when the ice melted, leaving masses of the finest clay behind it which were washed into the glacial lake-basin with the melting of the ice. Peat from the decay of vegetation on the mountain-side around and the growth of mosses in the pool, filled it gradually to the basin go rim and trees sprang up upon it on the western side where streams brought down granite sand to mingle with the peat and make a soil. That, in brief, is Great Meadow's history. No solid foundation for a road such as modern times demand can be had upon it and 2. Mr. Olmsted rejected road, though it clung closely to the northern side where the ddpth should be at least to the rock bottom of the basin, required at one point, the Federal Bureau of Roads engineers found by sounding, twenty-six feet of fill to give it solid base, and thirteen feet average for two thousand feet of road length, involving -- if rigidly carried out -- an immense expense and disfigurement of the Meadow surface. It would have been better and cheaper to have floated the road across it, if need were, as Stevenson did the railroad across Chapmoss outside of Liverpool, or to have driven piles to bear it up, like the houses on the Back Bay in Boston. I floated a horse road across it for & few hundred feet, where the depth of peat and water near the western mountain- side was beyond my sounding, and got a road that motor cars afterwards though one could feel it shake as they passed over. But such a road as that would not pass muster with Federal Road engineers, insisting on H solidity. Block the Great Meadow 3. out though, raising the water level by a yard or so and it would be no other than a northern musked dreaded XXX yeyond all esle by horses on the trail and wild phain cattle. Champlain Mountain is the easternmost of the Mount Desert Island's granite ***** peaks. Its northern base fronts directly toward Bar Harbor, a mile and a half away. The Ocean Drive, fronting the open sea, defines upon the shore its southern end; eastward, it is founded from the great Meadow fee- south by the deep, excavated gorge of Otter Creek. Sinking the coast level two hundred feet or ao would send the tidal currant rushing through it, making it a mountainous rock-island, which it trust have been, there is good evidence to show, during the last gay glacial period. The Ocean Drive must be entered from its eastern end, the actual entrance planned being on the Homans pasture. Whether it be reached from the mountain's eastern or western side, all cars must come. to this same point to enter on the Ocean Drive if coming by Park Road. The northern base and eastern side of 4. the mountain are magnificent, full of interest and variety. The wastern side, though bold, is foreated throughout and without view and interest, because the Government land extends unbrokenly over it and want of familiarity with the great seenery on the eastern side, that Mr. Rockefeller planned his road. Two eostly crews of Civil engineers brought down from New York worked a whole season through on this survey, but nothing came of it; their work was idle. It would have been a road without view or feature, exceedingly costly to build and double the length of a road upon the mountain's other side. And at the mountain's southern end it evaded and would have ruined the oldest and one of the most interesting trails upon the Island. It aroused the bitterest opposition and letters attacking it came pouring in to the National Park Offices at Washington, which I was asked to read, assort and comment on. Then in the midst of it all Mr. Rockefeller awakened to the fact that his road should have gone on the mountain's eastern side, not upon its western. And that is where the matter lies to-day. Mr. Olmeted's to me comment on it/was when this stage was reached, "that it would be better to wait for fifty years than not take the eastern way. The western route in any came is 5. dead beyond ressurection. The choise now lies between taling the r oad along the eastern side or giving the project up of a continuous Bark roadways Wednesday evening Cyl No. 2 Notes: Remember that the boys club house at the head of Echo Lake by Beech Cliff should not be given away either,to the Government or other, without due provision for its future. The site is valuable in the end more valuable than the building and the site I gave together with the beach below it, with due provision made tha if conveyed to the Government for such continued use as I intended when I gave the land. being properly Note: See that the property is looked after (August 15, 1940) 2. The territory, lumbered over, rough and wild, was new to him and he took the whole following summer and the next, that of 1921, to study it with his surveyor. Then, in the fall of 1921, he made me & proposition, Impr the child of my suggestion, to build & whole system of such roads continuing the one I asked for and ox- tending it round the whole northern slope of Sargent Mountain to ultimately connect above Hadlock Pond with the horse-road system he had been building previously. to And this, which gave great scope to his horse road desire, he added, as if in componsation to the motorists, a motor road along the western side of Cadillao Mountain, contributing for this in his offer doomed, $150,000, which ho, judging by old horse-road standards, to be sufficient for the road's construction. This offer, of combined horse-road and motor-road construction, was made as a single offer, the one not to be accepted without the other. It carried with it the purchase and presentation to the Government of lands on Great Pond Hill, where the motor road would take off, and on the northern slope of Sargent Mountain, where an old foot trail to the summit had been blooked recently by the owner, who fenced his bounds and demanded toll for coossing. (August 15, 1940) 3. So I did not hositate to accept, 80 for as with me lay the power, Mr. Rockefeller's offer. The next stop was to secure the approval of it by the National Park Service, and in the following spring I invited the Assistant Director, Mr. Arno B. Cammerer, to come down and stay with me and study it. He did, coming down from Washington with me Champlain Mountain and the New Park Road Champlain I consider the most interesting mountain in the entire Mount Desert chain, as it stands out upon its eastern end separated from Cadillac Mountain and the Flying, Squadron by the deep Gorge through which, during the last glacial period when the coast stood at a lower level in relation to the sea, the ocean must have surged backward and forward as the tide rose and fell and storm waves rode in, making it an island. The mountain's western side alone, where the con- tinuous mountain-to-shore Park road was originally planned, lacks interest and beauty. On. the north the mountain faces broadly, steep and forest-clad, across the Great Meadow basin toward Bar Harbor and the water of the upper bay, rising in one swift slope to its full height. This front, on either side, is flanked by lower mountainous projections: on the west, Picket Mountain, dominating precipitously the narrow, ice- torn gorge; to the east, a boldly ascending ridge of rock, smooth, ice-planed and bare above, forested below, which terminates abruptly toward the north in Bear Brook Quarry, from whose summit one gets the first sight of the ocean after leaving Cadillac. 2. Along the eastern side of this ridge, which carries on its crest what is probably the earliest summer-visitor trail upon the Island, runs the survey for the projected mountain-to-shore Park road which here obtains the single ocean view from a commanding height the road affords throughout its course, Cadillac apart. Descending in its southward course through rocky defiles to open meadowland, the road as planned passes beneath a magnificent cliff, rising almost sheer eight hundred feet; then after passing through a stretch of open woodland and across a second meadowland, opposite Schooner Head, where wild cranberries and other marsh plants grow that turn to rich color in the fall, the road comes out at last at the eastern end of Bar Har- bor's former Ocean Drive, the commencement of the Park's new coastal road, the mountain terminating above in a splendid headland known as the Beehive and the mountain heights of Gorham, with wonderful surf-cut cliffs and caves showing how the coast has risen since the last and recent glacial invasion. 3. Along this route there is interest throughout and constant change of scene. From mountain top to Hunter's Beach there is no dull section; scene fol- lows scene and the whole topography of the region is set forth in those dozen miles. . Nor is there any sacrifice in its course of any early trail that people in the past have walked and loved. March 29. Dictaphone None of the mountain names on the Island were old when we came down in 1868. There was no need for them till summer folks came down and began to climb. For the Indians and the early settlers alike they were simply a hunting ground, roamed over by deer and bear. The names given them had no background in local usage or tradition nor interest in themselves and when the Government took over the lands, it was suggested to me that better might be found, relating the Government is new possessi on with the old French occupation of the coast and its early history. And the names given were consulted over and approved at Washington. The early settlers gave excellent descriptive names to all that entered into their life, the seacoast and the offshore harbored waters. Otter Creek; Egg Rock, the sea gulls' home; the Cranberry Island, settled earliest of all for their good boating opportunities; Duck Brook, whose food-bringing waters are the habitat of ducks in winter, where they come down and meet the sea when inland waters all are frozen over; or like Somes Slund they bear the name of early settlers. Hulls cove and Salisbury Cove are other instances. The whole life of the earl comers was connected with the water which gave them the opportunity for trade and connection with the eariler settled regions whence they came. And in none of these old names has any change been made or thought of They tell their own story and are interesting. Dictaphone March 29 The name, The Flying Squadron, bears the impress of the time when t he Government received the tract, July 8, 1916. It tells of the volunteer group of flyers, the Lafayette Escadrille, who offered the ir lives to France, before the United States had entered on the World War; and of the se who enlisted afterward for service in the Flying Squadron of the nation, all doing dangerous and splendid work in t hat new and untried field. And in my thought it was reminiscent, too, of the flight of the Valkyrie Maiden to the top of a mountain cliff in Wagner's magnificent opera, It was an addition of highest interest to our growing mountain chaim, uniting into a single mass its noblest group of mountains on the island, which were to form the nucleus for the future national park. Its acquisition shows in the first chapter in my story. Transcription of typed two-page G.B. Dorr signed document held by Raymond Strout. Undated: estimated timeframe by R. Strout, 1921-22. "Lafayette National Park is more, however, than a recreational and historical area. It forms a magnificent geological movement, and is unique in the opportunity it offers for preserving and exhibiting in a single tract our northern flora. Lying in this belt, passing through the Adirondacks and White Mountains, where from the Great Lakes east the boreal forest descends to meet the Appalachia, the Park with its ocean-tempered climate and remarkable diversity of landscape form is filled peculiarly to illustrate within a single tract, readily explored, the vegetation of a far- extended region, once densely forested. The sea surrounding it, fed by the Arctic Current, abounds in life rich in forms of interest to the marine biologist or student of our sea-food resource. And the Great Atlantic Coast migration route of birds nesting in the North, originating in remote antiquity, passes by and over it, affording them-as the whole coast did once-safe resting ground and sanctuary on their way. Through the long years to come, with their loses and vicissitudes, this Park, extended to a wider bound, must serve increasingly as a means to conservation and an opportunity for study, valuable alike to the [knowledge of science] to the artist, architect, and landscape planner." Wednesday evening Cyl No. 2 Notes: Remember that the boys club house at the head of Eoho Lake by Beech Cliff should not be given away either,to the Government or other, without due provision for its future. The site is valuable in the end more valuable than the building and the site I gave together with the bea oh below it, with due provision made tha if conveyed to the Government for such continued use as I intended when I gave the land. being properly Notes See that the property is looked after March 29. Dictaphone None of the mountain names on the sland were old when we came down in 1868. There was no need for them till summer folks came down and began to climb. For the Indians and the early settlers alike they weire simply a hunting ground, roamed over by deer and bear. The names given them had no background in local usage or tradition nor interest in themselves and when the Government took over the lands, it was suggested to me that better might be found, relating the Government is new possessi on with the old French occupation of the coast and its early history. And the names given were consulted over and approved at Washington. The early settlers gave excellent descriptive names to all that entered into their life, the seacoast and the offshore harbored waters. Otter Creek; Egg Rock, the sea gulls' home; the Cranberry Island, settled earliest of all for their good boating opportunities; Duck Brook, whose food-bringing waters are the habitat of ducks in winter, where they come down and meet the sea when inland waters all are frozen over; or like Somes Slund they bear the name of early settlers. Hulls cove and Salisbury Cove are other instances. The whole life of the earl comers was connected with the water which gave them the opportunity for trade and connection with the eariler settled regions whence they came. And in none of these old names has any change been made or thought of . They tell their own story and are interesting.