History

Deep in the jungle of northern Brazil, a tall, flat-topped mountain raises from the humid lowlands. This is a mountain of myth and mystery. A land found and forgotten over the ages. Perhaps, there are even more than one in this dense jungle. You may have heard of the adventures of Professor Challenger who explored this area in the early 1900's (see Conan Doyle's The Lost World for the story). He and his small troop of explorers returned with stories of fantastical dinosaurs, Jurassic plants, and lost tribes of men and apes.  Although Professor Challenger returned multiple times, he always kept the location secret. After his untimely death when his boat overturned on a return trip down the Amazon, no one has been able to find his exotic lands. 

From the stories Prof. Challenger and his associates returned with, it was always a death-defying assent and descent that never got easier. And once upon the grand plains, death was always near. But Challenger's Maple White Land was not the only lost world to be found in the Americas.

Vitus Emil Fibiger was the fourth son of a wealth Danish pastry baron at the start of the 20th century¹. As the fourth son, Vitus Emil was the black sheep in the family; he often played third fiddle in duets. His eldest brother, Johannes, was destined to take over the family business and was groomed in business and baking from an early age. Johannes would go one to build the Fibiger empire around the Western world and expanded out into a wide range of breakfast foods. Late in life, Johannes would sell the business to Nestle. The second son, Ludvig Wilhelm, was a great speaker and took to politics at an early age. While nine years old, Ludvig developed a complex government and many ministries for his toy soldiers.  He negotiated successfully with the workers in the pastry factories providing the Fibigers with one of the most productive and stable work forces across northern Europe at the time. At 25, Ludvig entered Danish politics and worked tirelessly to enable increased trade for the Danes. The Fibigers' third son, Malthe, joined the church. While always welcomed at family events, not much is known of Malthe as he enjoyed a quiet, undistinguished life in a country church. Vitus Emil had one older sister, Isabella, who married a Dutch merchant and moved to Zealand. She was very active in the Woman's suffrage movement in the Netherlands.

Vitus Emil was always a energetic and distracted child. While his siblings learned music, completed their school work and did other industrious activities, Vitus Emil would often wander off for hours on their estate spending his time wandering the local streams and forest. He often struggled to stay engaged during his tutoring. The only academics that he was even passable at was languages, picking up a reasonable amount of Latin, passable Greek, and some basic German. Several years younger than his closest sibling, Malthe, his wanderings, both physical and mental, only increased as his older siblings grew and left the family house. He showed no business aptitude even as his father and older brother attempted to find him a place in the family business. Finally, as he approached 30, his father had the idea to find some advantage in his wanderlust and sent him on an errand to the Americas. 

As the pastry business grew and Johannes branched out into other breakfast products, a wave of new fruits and flavors were sweeping across Europe. Seeing the grand opportunity, Vitus' father gave him the challenge of going off to the Americas to find the next great flavor for their filled pastries. Vitus Emil took this charge to heart and immediately engaged himself in researching the tropical Americas and what was known of their lands, peoples, and flora and read many accounts from previous explorers. It was during this time that he became enchanted by the fanciful stories from Professor Challenger. Although he was sure the stories were great exaggerations, he knew there had to be some seed of truth to them. 

After a year of planning, Vitus Emil was ready to take off. The first part of his journey took him to the Caribbean where he engaged several assistants and porters and learned all he could of the lands throughout Central America and the northern coast of South America. He reached out to several sea captains for stories and tried every exotic fruit that came his way. His skills with languages came to the forefront as he quickly became fluent in Spanish and learned several native dialects on the islands. After 6 months spent mainly on the islands of  Cuba and  St. Lucia, he headed west.

Here, in a place we now call Baja Fibiger, Vitus Emil discovered something much grander than a new fruit. Although he did find several flavorful plants including the cherimoyas or custard apple, it's flavor never really caught on with Europeans. Vitus Emil's real find was a land lost in time. Here dinosaurs live on with plants and trees of the Mesozoic Era. Trees and shrubs grow to incredible heights; animals known only through fossils roam the lowlands. Even modern flowers grow here to incredible size. Daffodils tower over the lands dwarfing even the largest of dinosaurs. Enormous sunflowers rise hundreds of feet, as tall as the California sequoias. Exotic daisies and herbs unlike anything Vitus had ever encountered were around every bend. And best of all, nothing seemed unusually dangerous. Sure, large beasts might accidentally stumble into your camp and there was always the danger that a 300 lb leaf falling from a plant would knock you silly, but nothing was malicious in this land. The dinosaurs went about their business with nothing more than a passing curiosity about the humans. Few, if any, of the plants were poisonous and in fact, several showed promising medicinal properties. 

For several years Vitus kept this secret hidden while he and a small team explored and mapped the area. But once the initial surveys were over, Vitus realized that this was a land that should be protected and nurtured and shared with all. So, in the final years of his life, Vitus began work on Fibiger Park. A large area has been protected and studied to allow tourist to visit it in relative safety and comfort. Outside this region, research continues into the properties of the over-sized plants and animals. Some limited harvesting is done to supply medicines and chemicals to the world. While Vitus Emil passed away several years ago, his vision and energy live on in Fibiger Park and all the lands around Baja Fibiger. We hope that one day you will join us and take in the wonders that abound.

¹He is distantly related to Johannes Fibiger who won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Medicine for results that were later discovered to be incorrect.]