Photograph Courtesy Phillips Historical Society

Madison Square Garden, that is. These mustachioed and doughty men, lined up in front of “Maine’s Exhibit” at the third annual Sportsmen’s Exposition in the winter of 1897, are real-life Maine guides, bearing the rifles, snowshoes, fishing rods, and other tools of their trade and ready to regale exhibition-goers with tales of their adventures in the North Woods.

The real mover and shaker behind this exhibit, however, was not a sportsman, and, ironically, in this photograph, she appears to have been upstaged by the very people and trappings she had brought to New York City to evoke Maine. Only by looking at the very center can one catch a glimpse of the Fly Rod Crosby’s long skirt, wide lapels, and averted profile standing in front of the evocative little log cabin dubbed “Camp Oquossoc” after the small town on Rangeley Lake, near Crosby’s own hometown of Phillips. Few outdoor enthusiasts — women or men — could match her skills in the wild: Cornelia Thurza Crosby had earned her nickname by performing such feats as catching fifty-two trout in forty-four minutes (one can only be glad that she was an early proponent of the catch-and-release conservation technique). And few could write about their experiences so well: As late as the 1920s, Crosby’s well-known newspaper column told tales of her Maine Woods adventures as well as of the guides and tourists — even out-of-state senators and governors — whom she met on her wilderness jaunts. But no doubt her greatest talent lay in advertising.

As Julia A. Hunter’s and Earle G. Shettleworth’s excellent biography, Fly Rod Crosby: The Woman who Marketed Maine, reveals, not only did she bring along the Maine guides, pine boughs, and numerous North Woods photos (including this one of the new log-cabin-style railroad station at the lake town of Bemis) to this and to other similar expositions, she transported one hundred live salmon and trout, “the largest mounted moose head in the world,” and even a live bear cub. At one exhibition alone, she and other Mainers handed out an estimated one hundred thousand circulars. To this day, there are more than a thousand Web sites listing her name. Just think what Fly Rod Crosby could have done with the Internet!