For more than 50 years, landowners large and small have willingly allowed access to old trails and roads for a few weeks in the winter for use by snowmobilers.

Exceptions were areas with active logging operations; and these moved about every winter, creating no hardship to anyone, and they were easily detoured around.

Now along comes the heavy hand of Roxanne Quimby and her “my way or the highway” attitude against snowmobile clubs and the millions of dollars pumped into the Maine economy by snowmobilers.

I believe it is shameful for a large landowner to resort to blackmail, intimidation and coercion against volunteer snowmobile clubs that ask for so little and provide so much for the economy of Maine. This landowner is just trying to advance her own wishes for a legacy at the expense of many good Maine people.

Maine has a splendid state park system with reasonable rates and millions of acres of private land, free to use with discretion, plus hundreds of private campgrounds.

My experience in land utilization suggests that Quimby’s 70,000 acres, whose major asset is a view of Baxter State Park, is simply not national park-worthy.

Jim FitzPatrick

Whitefield

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