Maine State House News
In 2021, Athol, Massachusetts named him “Businessman of the Month.” He hosts an investment advice program on a 50 watt AM radio station. His motivational speaking engagements fill medium-size banquet rooms from Danvers to Dorchester. His name is Zack Zorkerschmel. (“Pronounced just like it’s spelled,” he wants you to know.) He’s a Massachusetts developer. And he wants Maine to lease him a few million acres at a dollar per year.
Zorkerschmel’s name might ring familiar. As a businessman, he’s enjoyed—critics might say endured—a long and colorful history in New England. As owner and operator of Mainely Moose Tours, he earned a small fortune during the 1990s through his knack for marketing and some well-placed salt licks. A years-long investigation by the Maine Warden Service led to removal of the licks and a reportedly six-figure fine. The business soon dissolved. Zorkerschmel, though, retained enough cash to launch his next venture: OOB Boutique, which he describes as “a combination Speedo Shop/Skee-Ball Center/Burner Phone Emporium.” It lasted one season. Other of his less-than-successful ventures include a coffee brandy flavored energy drink, squirrel jerky, and--most famously--turning the Mount Washington Auto Road into the world’s largest snow tubing park. “I’m still bitter about that one,” he laments. “The entire infrastructure already existed, right down to what would have been the world’s coolest passenger lift: the Cog Railway.” Zorkerchmel gazes into the middle distance and shakes his head. “New Hampshire politicians, man. They have no vision.”
Zorkerschmel hopes Maine lawmakers possess the type of vision their Granite State counterparts lack. He’s in Augusta this week aiming to convince them to place an estimated 3.2 million acres of undeveloped forestland under his control. His plan: the world’s largest theme park, one based entirely on the history of logging in Maine.
In a recent interview, Zorkerschmel produced a poster-size map of the land in question and spent ninety minutes presenting his idea, which he called “part working forest, part tourist attraction.” The park will contain numerous “towns,” each designed and constructed to honor a particular period in Maine’s logging history. “Visitors will be able to experience Maine life as it was, all the way back to 1830,” Zorkerschmel explained. Among the planned attractions: hotels, restaurants, museums, exhibitions, midways, log flumes, roller coasters, woodsman exhibitions, lumberjack competitions, logging camp tours, and river drive re-enactments. His proposed name for the park: Bunyan World. As in Paul.
I asked Zorkerschmel if he worried that Mainers might find his vision more akin to Disney than Acadia. The developer rolled his eyes.
“Acadia. Hike a mountain at three in the morning so you can see the sunrise at six. Yeah, that’s a good time.”
He emphasized the importance of Bunyan World’s working forest, which he claims will guarantee thousands of woods-related jobs and the restoration of Maine’s title as “Lumber Capital of the World.”
“The reason Maine’s logging industry has suffered,” said Zorkerschmel, “is because it hasn’t adapted to the times. These days, when a person buys a stick of lumber, he envisions the tree from which it came. He wants to know where that tree grew. He wants to know that it lived free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. And, of course, he wants to know that it was harvested humanely.”
“Harvested humanely?” I asked.
Zorkerschmel arched his eyebrows in inquiry. “What?”
“Trees don’t have nervous systems. They don’t…you know, feel.”
He dismissed me with a wave. “They’re living things, and they deserve our respect. And ending their lives with those loud, unsightly, diesel smoke-spewing tree harvesters is anything but respectful.”
I asked if he had an alternative in mind. The businessman smiled.
“Crosscut saws and axes. The way nature intended.”
“Impossible,” I said. “You’d need to pay each crew member a thousand bucks a day to work that hard.”
“Wages will run high, that’s true. But Bunyan World ticket sales will more than offset them.”
Zorkerschmel heads to Bangor tomorrow for a meeting with city councilors. Bunyan World will need a mascot, and he’s hoping to buy a certain statue…
