This property is near my cabin in Western, Maine and has been on my list for awhile now! Thank you Lovell Historical Society for the photos and information.
On the side of Speckle Mountain in Stoneham, Maine sits an abandoned Swiss style chalet built by Roy C. Wilhelm, a New York City coffee importer. He moved to the Evergreen Valley in Maine and built his 3 story chalet in 1932, hosting thousands of visitors as a prominent figure of the Bahá’í World Faith. Local folks in Maine found his German name strange and how often he would send telegrams/wire money oversees. He was also caught signaling children in nearby Kezar Lake with a flashlight from his mountain top chalet. This was an innocent game but it led to an investigation by the FBI when he was suspected of signaling submarines in the Portland Harbor (wild considering how far apart these locations are!) Roy raised swiss goats and german shepherds on his property. "Wilhelm’s goat barn is nearby, a sturdy two-story structure that Green Berets retrofitted in the late 1970s. Stalls were turned into bedrooms with a dozen-plus bunk beds that remain. A clip in the Sun Journal archive said the Army used it for a “winter warfare operation”
"When he died in December 1951 at 76, he left about $1 million (the equivalent of $8 million today) to the Bahai Faith “for humanitarian purposes toward doing some share in healing a desperately sick world,” according to Sun Journal archives. He was posthumously awarded the rare Bahai honor “Hand of the Cause of God” and buried in his Stoneham hillside. The place was sold to pay for holy land around the Shrine of the Bb in Israel."