With Memorial Day — the unofficial start of Maine’s tourist season — rapidly approaching, visitors who have made previous trips to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park might run into unfamiliar traffic constraints.
Chief among them is a road project in Bar Harbor’s central village that has part of Main Street completely shut down, but there are also several areas inside the park that are still damaged from the heavy storms that hit Maine last winter.
Main Street closure
In Bar Harbor, the section of Main Street between Wayman Lane and Cromwell Harbor Road, which passes by the town’s ballfields, is closed to through-traffic, with cars being diverted to residential streets.
Main Street is a popular way for people to drive from downtown Bar Harbor to Acadia’s Sand Beach and other attractions along Ocean Drive, but park officials are encouraging visitors to use Park Loop Road instead, either from the park’s visitor center in the local village of Hulls Cove or via the park entrance on Eagle Lake Road, also known as Route 233.
“We know summer is coming,” said Val Peacock, chair of the Bar Harbor Town Council. “You can feel that traffic [volume] is up already.”
The town is upgrading water and sewer lines under the closed section of Main Street. The work likely will last through much of the summer, but will be paused and the road temporarily reopened for Independence Day, which is a major draw for visitors to Bar Harbor. Work will resume after the holiday.
The project, which will include streetscape improvements, is expected to be substantially completed by sometime in November, with full completion expected in the spring of 2025, according to Town Manager James Smith.
“We’re trying to get through it as quickly as we can,” Smith told the Bar Harbor Town Council earlier this month.
Seawall Road washout
Another complete road closure that is expected to affect visitors to Acadia is Seawall Road, where Route 102A passes through the Seawall section of the park between Southwest Harbor and Bass Harbor.
The road washed out in back-to-back January storms that brought exceptionally high tides and heavy surf to the entire Maine coast, and breached the road where it winds along the shore past its namesake Seawall Pond.
The Maine Department of Transportation maintains the road and, given its proximity to the ocean and the expectation of similar storms at some point, is weighing how to move ahead, according to spokesperson Paul Merrill.
“We’re assessing the situation in terms of local impact, emergency services, utilities, etc., before we reach a decision about the future of the road,” Merrill said last month.
Amanda Pollock, spokesperson for Acadia, said that with Seawall Road closed, visitors to Seawall Picnic Area and the park’s Seawall Campground, both of which are the southern side of the closure, are advised to travel through Bass Harbor.
Seawall Picnic Area still is covered with stones washed up from the adjacent beach, she said, making it accessible to pedestrians only. Park staff had to clear more than 700 downed trees from the campground across the road, she said, but the camping area is fully open.
“It was a lot,” Pollock said of the debris at the campground that had to be removed. “It was significant.”
Other park damage
Pollock said that the park is still trying to address other areas that were damaged in heavy storms this winter. The only place that remains fully closed to visitors is Little Hunters Beach off Park Loop Road, which was accessible only by a set of wooden stairs that washed away and has not been replaced.
Portions of the Ocean Path along Ocean Drive, and of carriage paths throughout the park, were damaged in the storms but are not closed to visitors, she said. Bicyclists should be careful and not go too fast when approaching flagged washouts on the carriage paths, she added.
A repaving project on the Cadillac Mountain summit road has been completed and motorists who want to drive up the mountain now need a reservation, with the seasonal requirement taking effect on Wednesday, May 22. Reservations must be made online and cost $6 per vehicle.
