Up for Grabs

Each year thousands of men and women and families recreate on Maine’s Public Reserved Lands. Most of these visitors know only that the large green areas on the map promise them access to some of the state’s most magnificent places. Very few have any idea how Maine acquired them. Or that, as a conservation success, their acquisition (600,000 acres) rivals the celebrated purchase and gift to Maine people of Baxter State Park (210,000 acres) by Governor Percival Baxter.

Up for Grabs: Timber Pirates, Lumber Barons, and the Battles over Maine’s Public Lands is the story of Maine’s Public Reserved Lands and how they speak to the very essence of Maine’s identity. With dramatic moments and colorful characters, the book weaves its way from colonial times to statehood in 1820 to the present, providing an engaging and informative history of Maine’s wildlands from exploitation to conservation and protection.