…Recent studies commissioned by Elliotsville Plantation Inc., a development company founded by pro-park philanthropist Roxanne Quimby, recasts the debate as competing visions of growth. Quimby’s name is a flash point in much of rural Maine, where she is the personification of urban elitism in the eyes of many residents — someone more concerned about rocks and trees than she is about them. But Quimby didn’t conduct the research, she just paid for it. And its findings should not be rejected before they are thoroughly examined.
The peer-reviewed analysis, conducted by Headwaters Economics of Montana, shows that even without a national park, the two-county Katahdin region has changed dramatically over the past four decades, and there is no reason to expect that the old economy will return.…