BAXTER STATE PARK – The rising mountain and unspoiled waters and land around it surely left a lasting impression on Percival Baxter, who in 1903 first visited the land that would one day bear his name.

Baxter, governor of Maine from 1921 to 1925, visited it as a young man on a trek with his father, hiking to Kidney Pond. One hundred years later, another governor, John E. Baldacci, made his way to nearby Daicey Pond on Friday, where he and others remembered and celebrated those first steps Baxter made in what would become a lifelong passion.

Baxter called the preserving of the area on and around Mount Katahdin “my life’s work.” Unable to convince the state to set aside the land, and conserve it for people to enjoy and to preserve wildlife, Baxter took it upon himself to create such a park. In 1930 he made his first land purchase of 6,690 acres which included most of Mount Katahdin.

In the decades that followed, Baxter would continue to give land to the state to develop a park, ultimately giving more than 201,000 acres.