Visitors Flooded Acadia in October Despite Closed Amenities and No Fees.
Acadia Is on Track for 4 Million Visits This Year as League of Towns Plans for Region’s Future.
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Window Panes Home and Garden.
BAR HARBOR—After a year like 2025, Acadia National Park visitation numbers starts to feel like old news. The number of visits each month are mostly increasing.
This October, however, was a bit of a different beast since the park was open with limited staff resources during the 43-day federal shutdown. The furlough began October 1 and entrance fees were not collected during its duration. Some amenities were not available.
That didn’t stop people from visiting.
“I just want to say thanks to the municipalities supporting the park during the shutdown. We had one of the busiest Octobers ever. That month was up 5% from the previous month last year, and so there was lots going on. It didn’t keep visitors from enjoying the park, and there were some serious incidents that we got great support from the towns again,” Acadia National Park Administrative Assistant John Kelly told attendees of the League of Towns (LOT), November 25.
The League is a group of administrators and sometimes staff of Acadia Region municipalities who meet most months to discuss regional issues. Kelly’s comments came toward the end of the meeting at the Bar Harbor Municipal Building.
Images from a LOT elected officials meeting. File photos.
With local elected officials and the Musson Group (a local planning consultancy), the League has been creating a strategic plan that currently focuses on goals of year-round housing availability and affordability, efficient and effective transportation as well as infrastructure, creating a culture of regional collaboration and governance, an economically resilient region with a sense of place.
How that all interweaves with the local economy and tourism in the area is currently being discussed at both the League level and local town level, as well as Ellsworth. Bar Harbor has begun a Sustainable Tourism Task Force to delve more deeply into the positives and negatives of having tourism as a part of a local economy.
However, the park is federal and the major driver of tourism for the region. This year, it’s broken a lot of records and may break some more.
“Our visitation as of the end of October is just keeping at 4 million visits. So we’ll break 4 million for sure by the end of the calendar year, which is up about 3.5% so far from year to date last year,” Kelly said. Those numbers were initially reported by Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News. “So it continues to be really busy.”
“I remember thinking 3 million was the most Acadia could ever possibly take, and that feels so quaint now,” Mount Desert Town Manager Alex Kimball said.
“It probably is,” Kelly said.
Automated counters kept track of vehicles entering the national park on Mount Desert Island and found that there were almost 600,000 visits to the park in October. As Kelly said, it is expected to hit 4 million visits this year, which is an amount that was only surpassed in 2021.
That year was right after COVID and the tourism industry had a nationwide increase in visits.
The park has been averaging approximately 70,000 visits in November and 17,000 in December. If those numbers are met, it will be at 4,080,000 visits in 2025. This is just about 10,000 more than last year.
The park has set monthly visit records this year for July and then August, with 797,000 visits and then 844,000 visits. October was its busiest October with 596,000 visits.
Since 1916, the national park has estimated visits. However, the formula for that estimate changed in 1990.
The next League meeting is January 27, 10 a.m., at Ellsworth City Hall. The public can attend.