Self-made millionaire Roxanne Quimby, who recently sold her last shares of her company Burt’s Bees and has been on a mission to buy up a lot of northern Maine land, also continues to block access to that land, most often prohibiting hunting, trapping and fishing. While completely legal to close her own land, the acts have left many Mainers angry.
Last year the state of Maine secretly negotiated a land swap deal that would give the state a 6,000-acre piece of land that included Lake Katahdin near Baxter State Park. Part of the deal divided the land into two segments. The lower segment included Katahdin Lake and about 4,000 acres which was made part of Baxter State Park and has very limited access. The northern parcel of about 2,000 acres is now being managed by the Maine Department of Conservation and is open to everyone – although now that Quimby has further blocked access, Mainers now have no real way to get to that land, used by some for hunting.
That deal angered many of us who were willing to look beyond the pretty piece of land and see the lopsided swap arrangement, the limited access and the many problems that would face Maine residents owning land next to Quimby. Also at issue was whether or not Quimby was involved in those secret negotiations that some of us believed would result in more land closures and virtually no access to land owned by the state. Much of Quimby’s land is around the Baxter Park and Katahdin Lake parcels. Although denied by those involved, many of us thought that the MDOC and Quimby secretly negotiated land deals, all of which still remain unrevealed to the citizens of Maine.
Over the weekend, I received photographs from reader Steve Lane and a brief message that read as follows:
Well…..its official. Roxanne Quimby has blocked access to her land in the Katahdin Region. Here are the photos I took today when I tried to take my daughter to some of our traditional hunting spots.
The first picture, as Steve captioned it, is of the gate blocking the Kellogg Mountain Road.
The second picture shows the Sandy Stream access road now closed by water bars and huge boulders.
The third picture reveals signs limiting access to her “Nature Sanctuary”.
Tom Remington
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