It's a little known fact of American history that Theodore Roosevelt spent a considerable amount of time in Maine as a young man. While the future President was still a Harvard student, he began the project of transforming himself from "a thin pale youngster with bad eyes and a weak heart" into the Rough Rider he later became. During this impressionable time in his life, Roosevelt made the acquaintance of a legendary North Woods guide and logger named William Wingate Sewall.
Starting in 1878, Sewall began taking TR hunting, camping, and trapping in the backcountry around Mount Katahdin in northern Maine. Sewall's true legacy, however, was helping to instill in the young Roosevelt a deep reverence for wild places that led, indirectly, to the creation of the modern conservation movement.
We've told this story before in Down East, but now my colleague Andrew Vietze has written a critically acclaimed book on Roosevelt and Sewall's unconventional friendship. It's called Becoming Teddy Roosevelt, and if you are interested in Maine and history, you should read it.