PATTEN, Maine — The National Park Service will keep an information table at the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum until the museum closes for the season despite a donor’s threat to withhold contributions.
Ten of the museum’s 11 directors deliberated for about an hour behind closed doors Thursday night before voting to continue to allow park service workers to use the space until Columbus Day. The museum will reopen on Memorial Day weekend next May, but the board of directors will revisit the issue of the park service presence when it meets for the first time next year on April 6, Curator Rhonda Brophy said.
This will give board members “the time to take public input on it,” board President Frank Rogers said after the executive session.
Rogers declined to provide the vote tally. As a private organization, the museum does not need to vote on the matter publicly.
The donor’s threat came two days after President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Aug. 24 accepting entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby’s 87,563-acre donation to the park service. The Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument’s five parcels are about 5 miles west of the museum, which is on Shin Pond Road. Park service officials opened an office in Millinocket on Aug. 25 and also were allowed to use work space at the nonprofit museum in Patten.
A national park service presence in Maine’s North Woods has long been seen by many Mainers as a threat to the forest products industry that for more than a century has dominated northern Maine’s economy.
Rogers described Thursday’s executive session as “contentious” and much of the local response to the president’s decision as “bitter.”
“But in the long run,” he said, “we have to move forward.”
Thursday’s decision, Brophy said, does not change the museum’s neutral position on the monument — a stance that has not changed since Quimby announced publicly in 2011 that she hoped to give thousands of acres her family owned east of Baxter State Park to the park service.
But the neutral stance failed to quell the ire of the unidentified donor, who objected to the park service’s presence by telling Brophy on Aug. 26 that “he has spoken to many people who feel the same way,” Brophy said at the time.
Made with Rogers’ approval, Brophy’s decision on Aug. 25 to allow the park service to use the space was consistent with museum policies that allow it to serve as a meeting place and information outlet for community and social service groups, she said.
“There are really no other places in Patten that are usable like this,” Brophy said previously.
The museum has received “only one or two” negative responses from donors. The non-profit organization needs $60,000 to $70,000 annually in donations to operate, Brophy said.
Board members who spoke during a discussion that began Thursday’s meeting split over whether park service workers should stay in the museum.
Rogers and board member Peter Roy said the monument was helping the museum to survive, and to fulfill its mission, by drawing much-needed attention to it. As many as 40 people a day have visited the museum over the last week — about twice as many visitors as it typically gets at this time of year, Brophy said.
“It’s been the busiest week that I have seen here in the last 25 years,” Rogers said after the meeting.
Donations totaling more than three times what the unidentified donor threatened to withhold have come in since the threat became public, said Brophy, who declined to provide dollar amounts.
Board members Durward Humphrey and Ken Libby said that the museum’s mission, to preserve Maine’s lumbermen’s legacy, shouldn’t be undercut by the promise of greater exposure.
“It isn’t about the money,” Humphrey said. “If the devil is pounding on your door, do you welcome him? The devil has come through our door.”
Traffic to the monument will still visit the museum, Humphrey said, “without destroying our relationship with the people who have supported the mission and vision of the museum.”
Tim Hudson, the park service official overseeing the monument, left the meeting prior to the decision being made. Before he left, Hudson said the park service intends to maintain a presence in Patten.
A downtown landlord and the owner of vacant land opposite the museum have expressed interest in housing the park service if the museum doesn’t, Town Manager Raymond Foss said.
Park service staff and volunteers will continue to run a table at the museum several days a week through Oct. 10.