Percival Proctor Baxter (1876-1969) received the Pugsley Gold Medal in 1948. In today's political climate being an elected official does not always connote altuism that politicians once professed. Baxter was born on November 22. 1876 one of the eight children in philanthropic family in Portland, Maine. He bagn his education in Portland, graduating from Portland High School in 1894 and from Bowdoin College in 1898. He enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating with his LLB in 1901 and he was admitted to the bar. However Baxter never practiced law for livelihood. In 1905, Baxter was elected to the Maine House of the Representatives, where he was relected on two subsequent occasions. His political career also included two terms as state senator in 1908 and 1920. Soon after his election as president of the senate, the governor died and Baxter automatically succeeded him. He successfully ran for re-election in 1922.
In 1903, Baxter went on a fishing trip with bis father and it was then that he saw Katahdin for the first time ( Katahdin means : Greatest Mountain" in the Penobscot Indian language). After 1916, most of the efforts to create some sort of preserve were engineered by Baxter. A survey of 154,000 acres in the Katahdin region by the U. S Forest Service in 1918 reported that 53% was burned over land, 15% was bare rock and stunted growth 12% virgin growth then being cut and 5% timber under 100 years old. Baxter pointed out that almost three million acres were given away to the railroads in 1868. In 1931, the legislature named the park he had begun to amass in the heart of Maine wood in his honor. In June 12, 1969, Baxter died in Portland, Maine. Ironically, the $7 million endowment for the park's maintainence which Baxter established in his estate meant that in the early 1970's for the first time the park was well resourced.