He came from somewhere back in our long ago.

Before Old Town Canoes, before Bass Weejun shoes, Frederick C. Barker (1853-1937) fired the world’s imagination by discovering and marketing Maine not just as a place but as an idea, a style.

A Rolling Stone

He was born in Saccarappa Village, the early name for Westbrook. By age six he’d moved to Andover. No doubt he was a dreamer: while his friends tried to land jobs in local mills, he hunted, fished, trapped, and extended his wanderings to include Rangeley, where he first experienced Mooselookmeguntic Lake. He fell in love with the stars’ reflections in the water. Then he heard the future calling.

Trending into Maine

An interesting phenomenon had taken hold at the lake. Near the south end was Students Island. From the 1850s on, Yale undergrads in letter sweaters (followed by raccoon coats and ukuleles) considered it a rite of passage to bundle into trains in New Haven and flock here to rusticate. Barker crashed their campfire discussions, entertained them with his wilderness yarns, and conducted stealth marketing surveys to get at the heart of their secret cravings. Why have you come here? What are you searching for? What’s your favorite drink? 

Oh, and if you ever got married, would you bring your families here?

To the Rafters

The canny Mainer worked night and day, scraped together investors, and built trendy hunting lodges and hotels (among them The Barker, Bemis, and The Birches—which he’d first opened as Students Island Camps) filled with the gritty gear his beloved travelers dreamed about. Vaulted, woodsy interiors. Canoes and paddles. Granite fireplaces and antlers. Arts and crafts furniture. Hudson Bay blankets and snowshoes. After seeking approval from the State of Maine, he exclusively operated five steamboats taking tourists across the lake to his clusters of oh-so-private small-house lodge communities. Engaging in letter-writing campaigns to editors across the country, he whispered about the magic being discovered here: Shh! Don’t come! In 1911, a year before L.L. Bean was founded, the New York Times took the bait: “SALMON FISHING IN MAINE. Lakes Full of Them and Big Catches Are Being Made.”

Taking Us Closer

By then, Barker’s woodsy empire was in full swing and Maine was the talk of the nation, in large part due to Barker’s natural gift for cool, clear writing—shades of Jack London and even Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter’s Album.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.