Postcards from Gus #03 - The North Woods, the Road, & a Rambler

Gus Explores Katahdin, Baxter, & Maine’s Interior

Cathy Jewitt & Ben Meader, Authors
John Meader, Photo & Content Editor

Gus’s Postcard of the Millinocket Trading Post, #367. Courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

In mid June of 1966, Gus pulled over twelve miles northwest of Millinocket at the last gas stop before driving into the woods. Opened in 1948 as the Millinocket Lake Store, the station sits on the Baxter Road where it threads between Ambajejus and Millinocket Lakes, bringing visitors straight to the foot of Katahdin. After parking to the right of the store, Gus crossed the road and snapped this picture for his postcard Millinocket Trading Post. The store has had several owners and still sells gas today as the North Woods Trading Post. The Golden Road—completed in 1972, just a few years after Gus’s photo—now runs parallel to the Baxter Road as they pass between the lakes, servicing over two million acres of forested backcountry in the Penobscot, St. John, and Kennebec watersheds. The Golden Road was built over the course of three years as Maine’s paper industry transitioned from large scale river drives to overland transport. Today, a wooded median keeps logging trucks on one side and visitors to Baxter State Park on the other. On the day Gus stopped in 1966, the road had yet to be built. It was Gus’s first trip to the area that year, but he’d been there numerous times before. The day was beautiful and warm, and the light was perfect for photos.
He found the weather much less enjoyable twenty-one years earlier, however. In 1945 Gus’s son Fred, who was 20 years old at the time, had returned home on a 72 hour pass from the Army Air Force. They both decided that a hike up Katahdin was in order. Fred remembered it well:

“Dad and I started up the mountain Memorial Day Weekend in 1945. We spent the night at the Ranger’s cabin at Chimney Pond, but when we awoke there was a blizzard raging with 6” on the ground so we gave up our mountain climbing and headed for the base of the mountain where we had left the car and headed for South Portland.”

Although the freak May snowstorm kept them from reaching the summit that day, Gus and Fred knew they’d be back. Gus had been hiking and exploring northern Maine since childhood—first taking trips with his older brother Luther and their father, then guiding hunting trips as a younger man, and finally creating recreational maps of the entire state during the final years of his life. [^1]
Luther’s small pictorial map and postcard business had grown largely from the memories, experiences, and interests that the two brothers had shared. But after Luther’s death in 1960, trips to map and photograph the state were now Gus’s responsibility. Visits to these places must have been somewhat bittersweet. Luther wasn’t there with him to navigate the back roads and paths around the north woods, but his brother’s past work would serve as a guide for Gus’s future endeavors. Working since the 1940s, Luther had primarily created pictorial maps; at that time Gus was experimenting with paint and helped Luther by adding color to his brother's fine penwork.

An atypical map for the Phillips brothers, this example of Luther’s WWII map of the Pacific demonstrates Gus’s early attempts to add color to the cartography. Courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

But now, as Gus began to draft his own maps and postcards in the 1960s, he stretched their subjects and styles to match his own interests. With visitors flocking to Katahdin, Baxter, and the interior of the state, Gus worked during the winter months to create a map of Baxter State Park, one of the first in a series of new maps. Through the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, many of the Phillips maps evolved from pictorial into recreational cartography. The following map of Baxter was published in 1965, and shows the transitioning of styles. Although Gus employed some conventional topographic techniques—contours and a somewhat crude shaded relief—his map is still inscribed with quotes, a decorative border, and figures of animals and plants. Despite (or perhaps because of) its strange blend of styles, the Baxter map was well received by Governor John Reed, who described it as “one of the most interesting and attractive maps I’ve ever seen,” in a personal letter. Whether he was exaggerating or not, it is hard to deny that the map has a certain charm.

Gus’s map of Baxter State Park. Courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

If the map weren’t evidence enough of his personality, one would need only to encounter him on the road to get the right sense. Gus delivered map and postcard orders in person. He drove the state of Maine from top to bottom, taking photos for postcards and delivering orders. A welcome guest at many diners, sporting camps, and gift shops, Gus was known for his love of talk, tall-tales, pie, and his blue AMC Rambler with the “MAPS”' license plate. On these trips the station wagon would be almost filled with prints to sell—whatever space remained was crammed with vegetables from his garden, which he would share along the way. To his friends, he was often known for accompanying gifts of corn with instructions that “it should be eaten within the half hour.” [^2]

Left: Gus alongside his Rambler, used to deliver maps and postcards throughout the state. Photo is courtesy of author Cathy Jewitt. Right: a map showing towns where sales were made from March 1st to June 1st in 1963, as well as the path of the upcoming 1963 eclipse. During this time, he sold over 75,000 postcards.

During the spring and summer of 1963, for example, Gus put many hundreds of miles on the Rambler in a few short months. This spring was busier than most; Gus rushed to sell his new postcards for the upcoming eclipse. He made deliveries to dozens of Maine towns. With sales numbering over 30,000 for his Maine eclipse postcard alone, Gus’s prints began to appear on wire racks from Mount Desert Island, to Augusta, Greenville, Old Town, Dexter, Jackman, Millinocket, and even all the way to Aroostook’s Limestone and Caribou. The eclipse was to occur on July 20, and while Baxter would not be in the path of totality, many places in northwestern Maine would be. While many small towns were not accustomed to a high volume of tourists, they predicted that the event would be good for business. For a while the state’s economic office had been cautiously predicting that Maine might see an influx of perhaps ten thousand visitors on the days before and after July 20th. However, as reservations for lodging began pouring in, the number was revised to two hundred fifty thousand. In Dexter, a town between Bangor and Greenville, residents agreed to postpone their usual 4th of July celebration and instead hold an “eclipse week-end,” complete with “a fishing derby, barbecues, dances, and various get-togethers in true Maine style.” The visitors were reported to be so numerous that many had to be housed in private homes. [^3]

From November to March, when he wasn’t out photographing winter scenes, Gus gave the station wagon a rest. Aside from working on new maps, he’d cull through the year’s photos to decide which would make the best postcards—often employing the evening hours of his children and grandchildren. Gus’s Kodachrome carousel would whir after supper—just for an hour or two... or three... Which one of the twenty aerial views of Baxter was the best? Was the visible wing strut too much of a distraction?

Left to right, Gus’s Postcards: #58 (Katahdin) and #230 (Middle Fowler Pond). Courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

Beyond offering Gus both a living and a hobby—as a guide in his youth, then later as a photographer and cartographer—the woods gave him sustenance of a different kind. There was simply something about Maine that Gus loved, something deeper that pulled at him. Why, after all, does Maine draw so many visitors? “The love of place” or “fresh air” or “the way life should be,” whatever you’d like to call it—we’ve all experienced some version of that magnetism to the natural beauty that Maine has to offer. It is hard to describe. In 1853, Thoreau made an attempt in one of his trips to the Maine woods:

“I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved.”

More recently, in affirmation of another one of Thoreau’s statements that “in Wildness is the preservation of the world,” this summer both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed The Great American Outdoors Act. Signed into law on August 4th, this act will establish the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund, allowing not only for the restoration of countless outdoor areas but also for their continued preservation for generations to come. [^4]

Photo of Katahdin, by John Meader.

Perhaps preservation is, by nature, an acknowledgement of a past we want to recreate and maintain for the future. It has, therefore, meant different things to different people in different times. Gus’s love of the woods, like Thoreau’s, was rooted in an appreciation for an untrammeled natural world and would provide him with sustenance throughout his life.
In that vein, it is interesting to note a new type of preservation effort is underway. In early May of this year, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument was officially recognized as the first International Dark Sky Sanctuary on the East Coast by the International Dark Sky Association. One of only eleven other locations in the world, Maine’s north woods is known as having one of the darkest skies in the United States east of the Mississippi. Although the landscape has drastically changed since the days when the Wabanaki were the only stargazers in Maine, the night-sky above remains similar. Katahdin Woods and Waters’ Superintendent Tim Hudson suggests: “Experiencing the night skies here will take you back in time to the night skies first experienced by the Wabanaki 11,000 years ago and the many people who have followed in their footsteps…” Indeed, although we cannot see through their eyes, this recognition is sure to bring an appreciation for conservation of a different sort. Travelers to remote places will see what the night looks like without the light pollution from cities and hopefully reflect upon those who came before us, as well as those who remain. [^5]

Photo shows “Stars over Katahdin,” a star party hosted by Katahdin Woods and Waters and the National Park System. Photo is by John Meader.

Gus and Fred, on their descent from Chimney Pond in the late spring snow, back on Memorial Day in 1944, must have thought they would have a good story to tell, regardless of how frustrating and cold the weather was. That night they’d drive back to South Portland—the Phillips family had moved there for the war effort just a few years ago. Gus worked as a draftsman at the Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding Corporation to support his wife and children for the duration of World War II. It would be years until he’d pick up a camera, move back home to Northeast Harbor, or even think about selling postcards. Fred, on the other hand, with only three days respite from the Air Force, would enjoy another day with his family before returning to base. So much had happened in the last month. Roosevelt had died and Truman was now president. The Allies had taken Okinawa in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific Theater, and it was assumed that the invasion of Japan would be a long, hard-fought process, with likely thousands of casualties. Even though Fred was still in training and would not end up seeing combat, many of his contemporaries were deployed to the Pacific with no knowledge that the war would end abruptly later that summer. It is hard to imagine the contrasts: a blanket of fresh snow covering Katahdin’s Great Basin, the three and half mile descent along Roaring Brook Trail, the 400 million year old mountain Gus and Fred left behind them, and the strange, rapidly changing world that they would return to.
Although the human history of Maine’s interior continues to be written, the timelessness of its lakes, woods, and mountains offers perspective and scale to the events of our world, as they unfold in our time. For Gus, in his time, perhaps the postcards and maps were his way of sharing that timelessness—even as the small, transitory gifts that they were.

Katahdin at Abol Bridge in 2020, photo by John Meader. Matched with Gus’s postcard #232, courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

A gallery of photographs of Maine’s backcountry, by John Meader:

Special thanks:

The Penobscot Marine Museum, for image use, preserving the Phillips Collection, and continued support; Mary Jane Phillips Smith, Gus’s daughter, for sharing family history and continued support; Rhumb Line Maps for cartography; and John Meader for sharing both his extensive knowledge of astronomy and his photography.

Partners for the Postcards from Gus blog:

Sources, further reading:

1. Gus’s Katahdin trips, woods history.

Augustus Phillips: handwritten entries in notebooks and receipts, 1966, collection of author.

Frederick Phillips: handwritten memory, collection of author.

Mary Jane Phillips Smith, Ellsworth, interview by Cathy Jewitt and Ben Meader, February 9, 2019, in person.

“Behemoths of the Forest Ride the Golden Road,” The Hour, September 23, 1985, link.

“North Woods Trading Post Katahdin, Maine,” accessed August 15, 2020, link.

2. Map and postcard development.

Personal letter: Governor John H. Reed to Augustus D. Phillips, March 31, 1965, collection of Mary Jane Phillips Smith.

Augustus D. Phillips Obituary: Mildred Gilley, “Gus: He was Perhaps Our Best Known Village-Born Artist,” Bar Harbor Times, January 8, 1976.

3. On the eclipse in Maine.

Augustus Phillips: handwritten entries in notebooks and receipts, 1963, collection of author.

Isabel Currier, Photographs by Marion Bradshaw, “Maine’s Moment in the Sun’s Eclipse,” Down East, July, 1963, link.

Information on upcoming April 2024 eclipse: link.

4. Thoreau quotation, the Great American Outdoors Act.

“Henry David Thoreau Quotations Wildness Quotations,” The Walden Woods Project, accessed August 15, 2020, link.

For further reading about Thoreau in Maine: Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009).

National Park Service news release and background information: link.

5. International Dark-Sky Association, Katahdin Woods and Waters.

Aislinn Sarnacki, “Katahdin Woods and Waters is the best place to see the night sky on the East Coast,” Bangor Daily News, May 8, 2020. link.

Dark Sky Maine, link, and Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters, link; these are two of the principal organizations that enabled the dark sky designation.

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument: link.

For more information about the IDA in Maine, check out: link.

#03 - The North Woods, the Road, & a Rambler

Gus Explores Katahdin, Baxter, & Maine’s Interior

#04 - Capturing the Fort

#02 - Breaking the Water