{"id":20511,"date":"2021-09-30T11:19:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T15:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=20511"},"modified":"2021-09-30T11:19:19","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T15:19:19","slug":"the-man-who-invented-maine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-man-who-invented-maine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man Who\u00a0Invented Maine"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23e6e6e6&amp;d=portland_monthly_magazine_october_2021&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=70&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h3 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He came from somewhere back in our long ago.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Before Old Town Canoes, before Bass Weejun shoes, <strong>Frederick C. Barker<\/strong> (1853-1937) fired the world\u2019s imagination by discovering and marketing Maine not just as a place but as an idea, a style.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">A Rolling Stone<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">He was born in <strong>Saccarappa Village<\/strong>, the early name for <strong>Westbrook<\/strong>. By age six he\u2019d moved to Andover. No doubt he was a dreamer: while his friends tried to land jobs in local mills, he hunted, fished, trapped, and extended his wanderings to include <strong>Rangeley<\/strong>, where he first experienced <strong>Mooselookmeguntic Lake<\/strong>. He fell in love with the stars\u2019 reflections in the water. Then he heard the future calling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">Trending into Maine<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">An interesting phenomenon had taken hold at the lake. Near the south end was <strong>Students Island<\/strong>. From the 1850s on, <strong>Yale<\/strong> undergrads in letter sweaters (followed by raccoon coats and ukuleles) considered it a rite of passage to bundle into trains in <strong>New Haven<\/strong> and flock here to rusticate. Barker crashed their campfire discussions, entertained them with his wilderness yarns, and conducted stealth marketing surveys to get at the heart of their secret cravings. Why have you come here? What are you searching for? What\u2019s your favorite drink?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p7\"><span class=\"s1\">Oh, and if you ever got married, would you bring your families here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">To the Rafters<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">The canny Mainer worked night and day, scraped together investors, and built trendy hunting lodges and hotels (among them <strong>The Barker, Bemis<\/strong>, and <strong>The Birches<\/strong>\u2014which he\u2019d first opened as <strong>Students Island Camps<\/strong>) filled with the gritty gear his beloved travelers dreamed about. Vaulted, woodsy interiors. Canoes and paddles. Granite fireplaces and antlers. Arts and crafts furniture. Hudson Bay blankets and snowshoes. After seeking approval from the State of Maine, he exclusively operated five steamboats taking tourists across the lake to his clusters of oh-so-private small-house lodge communities. Engaging in letter-writing campaigns to editors across the country, he whispered about the magic being discovered here: Shh! Don\u2019t come! In 1911, a year before L.L. Bean was founded, the <i>New York Times<\/i> took the bait: \u201c<i>SALMON FISHING IN MAINE. Lakes Full of Them and Big Catches Are Being Made.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><strong><span class=\"s1\">Taking Us Closer<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">By then, Barker\u2019s woodsy empire was in full swing and Maine was the talk of the nation, in large part due to Barker\u2019s natural gift for cool, clear writing\u2014shades of <strong>Jack London<\/strong> and even <strong>Turgenev<\/strong>\u2019s <i>Sketches from a Hunter\u2019s Album<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p11\"><em><span class=\"s1\">Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p11\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-20513\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls-1024x538.jpg\" alt=\"OCT21 Talking Walls\" width=\"1024\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls-1024x538.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls-300x158.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls-768x403.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls-200x105.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls-620x326.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/OCT21-Talking-Walls.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He came from somewhere back in our long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-talking-walls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20511"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20555,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20511\/revisions\/20555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}