For nearly 20 years the idea of creating a 3.2 million-acre national park in the heart of Maine's northern woods has polarized communities, which depend on a forest-based economy alongside outdoor recreation tourism dollars and environmentalists who value conservation of wild places. But, with the paper industry struggling and a scaled back version of the park being proposed, the debate is being renewed. What's at stake and who's behind it? Find out in this special radio documentary.

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MPBN News' Susan Sharon produced this half-hour radio documentary, which analyzes the plan put forth by philanthropist Roxanne Quimby to create a Maine Woods National Park. Park Place examines Quimby's intentions as well as the reasons behind the strong resistance and at how the woman who some still see as a "radical environmentalist" has been able to make converts of some of her most vocal critics.

The town of Millinocket is known as the Magic City because it was carved out of the woods by lumberjacks almost over night. For more than a hundred years, Millinocket and East Millinocket, affectionately known as "the town that paper made" hummed with the sounds of two paper mills that employed generations of residents and made the communities among the wealthiest in Maine.

But today, both mills are shuttered. The local unemployment rate stands at more than 20%. And residents are collectively holding their breath that a prospective new buyer, Cate Street Capital of New Hampshire will put them to work again.