WRITTEN BY RICHARD SHAW

Before tourists ventured into Baxter State Park, and onto its mile-high peak named Katahdin, there were the photographs. Black and white — and eventually color — postcards and other views captured the park’s now more than 200,000 acres in all four seasons. Popular locales were Katahdin Stream Campground, Chimney Pond, and Nesowadnehunk Stream.

Lugging large-format field cameras up Abol Trail and other paths to the summit was hard work, but stereographer A.L. Hinds managed to capture the Knife Edge, circa 1870 — arguably the first such photo taken.


State of Maine Camp at Chimney Pond as shown in the 1925 book “Thru Maine by Camera” by Walter G. Hay.

Coffee table books selling the wilderness’ “forever wild” grandeur followed. Before former Gov. Percival Baxter donated the first nearly 6,000 park acres in 1931, “Thru Maine By Camera,” by Walter G. Hay, published in 1925, featured wide-angle views of the Katahdin region. At the same time, the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad’s magazine, In the Maine Woods, chronicled the area with illustrated hunting and fishing articles.

Other publications picturing Daicey Pond campground and hikers clinging to Index Rock followed. Marion J. Bradshaw, a Bangor Theological Seminary philosophy professor, published three of the best in the 1940s: “The Maine Land,” “The Nature of Maine,” and “The Maine Scene.” Long out of print, readers can find these books in libraries and on auction sites.


Dangerous moment on Index Rock in Baxter State Park, as shown in the 1947 book
“The Maine Scene” by Marion J. Bradshaw.

Moving into the 21st century, Arcadia Publishing came out with two photo-rich pictorials of the region. “Baxter State Park and the Allagash River,” by Frank H. Sleeper, and “Baxter State Park and Katahdin,” by John W. Neff and Howard R. Whitcomb, show the area in glorious black and white. Many of the views are postcard images dating to the 1930s.

Today’s jumbo-size color postcards of the Katahdin region may be glossier, but earlier cards, now collector’s items, were just as alluring. Such Maine photographers as Dexter’s Bert Call, who scaled the mountain 16 times, and his successor, Paul Knaut Jr., of Dover-Foxcroft, were two of the industry’s hardest-working lens men. Now deceased, their work lives on.