The Early Years of Maine Coast Heritage Trust
“Somehow we’ve got to win here. This is a unique place in the world, and I’m not willing to sit back and see it ruined.”
Peggy Rockefeller, MCHT Co-founder
MCHT Council Member Mary Rea recalls an evening, late in the 1960s, when Peggy Rockefeller arrived for a visit: "She marched into my island camp and exclaimed 'Mary, we've got to DO something!'" Peggy and her husband David, both avid sailors, were dismayed by how coastal development had begun transforming Maine's shoreline. Through conversations with the family's attorney, Donal O'Brien, and friends such as Tom Cabot and Bob Patterson, Peggy Rockefeller learned of an ingenious approach to protecting Maine islands. A legal agreement known as a conservation easement would allow landowners to keep their cherished properties while preserving their land's scenic and ecological values.
“There was a vision in the beginning when Maine Coast Heritage Trust formed... a vision, which continues today, that this amazing stretch of coastline should not be over-developed...”
Caroline M. Pryor, former Vice President of MCHT
Needing more information on potential legal tools for conservation, O'Brien asked fellow attorney David Strawbridge to do further research. "The upshot was," Strawbridge recalls, "that conservation easements looked like the best tool." Rockefeller found a close ally in Bob Binnewies, of Acadia National Park, who was eager for the Park to hold easements and shared her enthusiasm for launching a nonprofit organization to advance coastal land conservation.
Incorporated in September 1970, Maine Coast Heritage Trust was a truly collaborative venture with a tight-knit board and staff and strong working partnerships with The Nature Conservancy, Acadia National Park and others. Board members delighted in Rockefeller's spirited leadership, mischievous sense of humor and absolute dedication: working with her was, Council Member Gordon Abbott, Jr. recalls, "one of the great pleasures of life." In its first year, the Trust facilitated protection of 30 islands (having contacted 310 island owners and met with 46 of them!).
“In the face of the many uncertainties facing the Maine coast, I have tried to save what I can.”
Thomas D. Cabot, MCHT Co-founder
"From the outset, MCHT played a highly prominent role in the national land trust movement," observes Ben Emory, one of the Trust's first executive directors. When Congress threatened in the early 1980s to rescind the federal tax deductions that easements provide, Emory recalls, "we realized we had to pay attention to what was going on in Washington. That led to closer contact with other land trusts and soon prompted MCHT and three other trusts to found the national Land Trust Alliance."
By 1983, MCHT had become what one board member calls the "mother church" for Maine's local land trusts. It established a revolving loan fund, hosted an annual conference, and published a land trust handbook and directory. Tom Bradbury, Executive Director of Kennebunkport Conservation Trust and an MCHT Council Member, recalls how pivotal MCHT's support was to local land trusts during that time: "For technical and legal information, we turned with thanks and confidence to MCHT, grateful they were always there to guide us through any difficult area of negotiation. The staff of MCHT kept providing encouragement, knowing that... collectively [we] could protect the best that is Maine."
“Peggy Rockefeller and Tom Cabot were both down-to-earth people who were interested in practical solutions. I think that had a tremendous impact on the Trust getting started as it did.”
David Strawbridge, an attorney who helped establish MCHT
