George Bucknam Dorr was born into a comfortable life, as he inherited sizeable fortunes from both sides of his family.

While he had the wherewithal to travel extensively about the world and do anything with his life, he came to cherish the landscape of Mount Desert Island along coastal Maine. It was a lifelong connection spurred by childhood vacations on the island, one that spawned a tireless, and selfless, campaign to both conserve the island’s landscape and, more importantly, see it included within the National Park System. 

Dorr’s role in seeing Sieur de Monts National Monument established in 1916, the same year the National Park Service was created, is dissected by Ronald H. Epp in Creating Acadia National Park, The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr, a book released this year as part of Acadia’s centennial celebration.

This, the first complete biography of George Dorr, not only looks at his upbringing and where he found his passion for nature, but also examines his role in seeing national park status bestowed on a large portion of Mount Desert Island. Mr. Epp’s extensive research also uncovered that Mr. Dorr, the first superintendent of the national park that was renamed Acadia in 1929, was something of a burr in the saddle of the National Park Service.

“For nearly a decade Dorr had done his best to work within the growing bureaucracy of the national park system,” writes the author. “Yet to many officials, he was judged as noncompliant. He did not wear the National Park Service uniform, his reports contained scholarly references and allusions that departed conspicuously from the brief informational reports sought by Washington bureaucrats, and the most troublesome matter continued to be his independent management of the park itself.”

Brought to life through the support and assistance of Friends of Acadia, this profile of the man known as the “Father of Acadia” should be on the reading list of all Acadia lovers.