Acadia National Park saw its busiest year on record in 2025, according to statistics released by the National Park Service this month.
The park recorded more than 4 million visits last year, surpassing Acadia’s previous record set in 2021 when the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an influx in outdoor recreation across the country. The surge in park visitors has helped strengthen Bar Harbor’s booming tourism industry but has also required park and town officials to cope with packed crowds, heavy traffic and exorbitant housing costs.
The park counted 4,079,318 visits last year. Until now, 2021 was the only year in recorded history that Acadia tallied over 4 million visits. Last year’s numbers broke the record by over 10,000 visits, according to National Park Service data.
Acadia’s visit count hovered between 2 million and 2.5 million for decades, and first surpassed 3 million in 2016, when the park turned 100 years old. Barring a brief interruption at the outset of the pandemic, visits have steadily increased since then.
“National parks are part of the trend we started seeing in 2020 with increased interest in outdoor pursuits and the places where you can enjoy nature, fresh air, and the activities available in our natural environment,” Maureen Terry, legislative liaison of the Maine Office of Tourism, said Friday. “People appreciate not only the natural beauty of our landscapes but the substantial mental and physical health benefits from being outdoors. That trend has continued, and we see no sign of it being less significant in the year ahead.”
The rise in park visitors accompanied the island’s hike in housing prices, where the shrinking stock of affordable year-round rentals has heightened competition over the few cheap options still available.
Although the park provides housing to some seasonal employees, year-round workers aren’t offered the same assistance and local wages have fallen behind the soaring real estate prices, Acadia’s superintendent Kevin Schneider told the park’s advisory commission in June.
Acadia’s record number of visitors also has created traffic congestion on Mount Desert Island and surrounding communities. The 49,000 acre park can only be accessed by road or boat, though cruise ships have become increasingly regulated over the past several years.
Since 2022, Bar Harbor residents passed two referendums to ban visits from cruise ships with more than 1,000 passengers, in an attempt to alleviate some of the downtown congestion. Critics of the limit said a cap on cruise ships will hurt local tourist businesses, and have watched as the number of cruise ship visits have plummeted.
Bar Harbor officials said they will honor ship reservations that were booked prior to March 2022, when voters passed the referendums.
