After more than a decade of preparation, a digital collection of 30,000 primary documents related to the creation of Acadia National Park is now available to the public through the History Trust as the Creating Acadia National Park Research Archive. The Jesup Memorial Library is grateful to Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D. for undertaking the Herculean task of collecting documents from federal, public and academic libraries and making the physical copies available to the public through the Jesup’s new archive.

Ronald H. Epp is the celebrated author of Creating Acadia National Park: The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr, published by Friends of Acadia in 2016. Public demand and the author’s desire for wide distribution led to preparation of the research archive, which includes manuscripts, interviews, and correspondence as well as transcriptions, maps, diverse news clippings, and a robust collection of relevant documents from the Rockefeller Archive Center. The timeframe covers the early 19th century through mid-20th century. Since no administrative history of Acadia National Park existed, the biography was undertaken as an important contribution to the 2016 centennials of Acadia and the National Park Service.

The 40 feet of paper manuscripts covers the breadth and depth of early 20th century pioneering land conservation in New England. The philanthropic efforts of Dorr, Charles William Eliot, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. also dovetailed with the establishment of the National Park Service.

As many of these documents return to their origins in Hancock County, they highlight the historic importance of the Deasy and Lynam law firm of Bar Harbor and the Hale and Hamlin law firm in Ellsworth. These firms provided to Dorr and Rockefeller legal counsel that was "lost" for decades in the attics and basements of these institutions.

Both the paper and digitized archives were donated by Dr. Epp to the Jesup where they were catalogued. Former Jesup Director Matt DeLaney and his staff worked with the History Trust to add this content to their digital archive. The developing goal is to embrace new technologies and enable students, scholars, and the public at-large to explore beyond the old and new walls of the Jesup Memorial Library. The physical collection will be housed in the new climate-controlled archive of the Jesup’s expansion, scheduled to open to the public in 2026. In addition to preserving these resources for future generations, the expansion will provide for greater access to the library’s special collections and facilitate amateur and professional researchers to explore local history and genealogy and to contribute to the living body of scholarship on and about Mount Desert Island.

To access go to jesuplibrary.org/epp-archive; or google “Epp and Acadia.”