Despite the 43-day federal government shutdown, Acadia National Park had its busiest October ever and is on pace to set a new annual record for total visits.
With nearly 600,000 visits tallied last month — when many buildings in the park were closed to the public and only a skeleton crew was on duty — Acadia National Park almost reached 4 million visits for the year by Halloween.
The only time Acadia has surpassed 4 million visits in any calendar year was in 2021, when a post-COVID upsurge in outdoor recreation nationwide made it the park’s busiest year on record.
Automated vehicle counters kept operating through the shutdown, allowing park staff who returned to work last week to estimate how many visits the park had in October. If Acadia sticks to its recent averages of roughly 70,000 visits for November and 17,000 visits in December, it will set an annual record of approximately 4,080,000 visits, which is roughly 10,000 more visits than it had in 2021.
The increase this year reflects the continuing popularity of outdoor recreation, which surged worldwide from 2020 to 2022 in the wake of the COVID pandemic. That popularity has sustained a tourism boom in Bar Harbor — even though the town has adopted strict limits in cruise ship traffic — but also has created management challenges in Acadia, which has sought to mitigate vehicle congestion in the park so visitors don’t sour on the crowds as they seek out nature.
Interest did not wane last month, even though most of the park’s staff was furloughed during the 42-day federal government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1. Some staff were kept on to clean restrooms and to provide public safety in the park, but ranger-led programs were suspended and no employees were on duty to field questions about what facilities were open, how to get around, or what there was to see and do.
An official with Friends of Acadia, which provides support to and advocates for the park, said that the closure created a “diminished” experience for tourists.
“We wish that they had been able to visit under better circumstances,” said Stephanie Clement, the group’s vice president of conservation. “We hope that Congress and the [Trump] Administration recognize that parks must have the staffing and funding needed to welcome the increasing number of visitors and safeguard the natural and cultural resources that make national parks like Acadia special.”
The minimal levels of personnel on duty during the shutdown, which kept the entrance station at Sand Beach open but unstaffed, meant Acadia could not collect entrance fees for 43 days, Clement said. The decline in revenue will make it more challenging for the park to mitigate the wear and tear that results from crowds of visitors.
“Eighty percent of what is collected at Acadia is retained by the park for infrastructure projects, building repairs, and trail projects,” Clement said. “Friends of Acadia collected funds in lieu of entrance passes and that will be donated to Acadia this fall. However, it was a drop in the bucket compared to what they would have collected in a normal October.”
The record pace kicked in this summer, when Acadia set records for all-time monthly visits in July and then again in August. The park had an estimated 797,000 visits in July, which was its highest-ever total for any month, but then surpassed it in August with 844,000 visits.
Acadia had nearly 660,000 visits in September, which was its third-busiest September after 2022 and 2021. The 596,000 visits it had last month broke an October record that the park set last year, when it had 567,000 visits for the month.
The park has estimated annual visitation totals every year since it was established in 1916, but how many visits Acadia received each year prior to 1990 is unclear. That year is when the National Park Service adopted a new formula for estimating visits after it concluded its prior methodology overestimated how many people came and went, Acadia officials have said.
In 1989, using its now-discarded formula, the park service estimated Acadia had 5.4 million visits, but officials now say they don’t think that figure is accurate.
