Dorr, George Bucknam

"Without question, Acadia National Park as it is known today would not exist without the tireless work of George Bucknam Dorr. But as his biographer Ron Epp so skillfully reveals in his new book Creating Acadia National Park, the Biography of George Bucknam Dorr, much of what we hold dear today on Mount Desert Island, and many of this community’s leading civic institutions, probably would not exist as well—if not for a lifetime of work by Dorr, a genteel Boston Brahmin.

"The list of institutions and agencies which he helped found and was involved in from the start is long, and in its entirety, an equally impressive accomplishment. It includes the Hancock County Trustees for Public Reservations, the Wild Gardens of Acadia, the Jesup Library, the Bar Harbor Athletic Fields, the Village Improvement Association, the Building of the Arts, the Bar Harbor Water Company, Kebo Valley Golf Course, the MDI Biological Laboratory, The Jackson Laboratory, the Abbe Museum, the Appalachian Mountain Club Camp, Schoodic and the Acadia Corporation....

"Along with covering the at-times seemingly impossible task of stitching together land on MDI and at Schoodic into a single reserve, Creating Acadia National Park, also focuses appropriately on what was going in Washington, D.C. Passages dealing with the relationships Dorr held with conservation icons such as Stephen Mather and Horace Albright were especially enlightening....

"Epp’s exhaustive, methodical and impressively thorough research manages to pull the details of this extraordinary life together, from Dorr’s early years growing up among the luminaries of “The Hub,” as early Boston was known, to his studies at Harvard and later into an adult life of privilege, traveling the world, being involved in academia, but never really settling on a career or longing for marriage and a more domestic existence....

"Passages noting Dorr’s willingness to defy directives from Washington when he became Acadia’s first superintendent also help document his single-minded determination to first do what needed to be done to make the shared vision for the park a reality....Those wishing for a scholarly telling of the tale of Dorr’s life through his death at age 90 while he was still in office as superintendent will not be disappointed" (Brechlin, Earl. "Dorr biography illuminates a life of service" at Friends of Acadia [ https://friendsofacadia.org/news/dorr-biography-illuminatea-life-service/ : accessed 09 May 2025]. From the Mount Desert Islander, March 31, 2016).

Creating Acadia National Park, The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr is published by Friends of Acadia.