“The canoe races at Picnic Rocks (1890) were becoming problematical. The owners of the land were trying to exact fees for boat landings and had hopes of turning their wooded acreage into a commercial enterprise in other ways. The membership of the River Club saw this as a threat to their continued use of the rocked-edged site, which included the great granite outcropping they had named Sunset Rock, and their pleasure in the unspoiled beauty of its abutting woods. By the end of August, E. Dunbar Lockwood, a club member, who had built his Cape Arundel cottage, ‘Rock Ledge,’ in 1887, had purchased about seventeen acres on the Kennebunk side of the river from H. P. Towne and about fifteen acres on the other side from Horace Clough. Dunbar’s purpose was not only to allow free use by boaters from the river, but to ‘preserve the beautiful grounds from being leased or sold for excursions, booths, etc.’ His hope was that a syndicate would be formed to hold the property until it could be sold to the River Club or to maintain it as a park, ‘for the use of all.’”
Joyce Butler in “Kennebunkport, the Evolution of an American Town”