A tiny portion of Acadia National Park is a big driver of this summer's visitor boom

File photo / Laurie Schreiber Hikers take in the vista at Acadia National Park.

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A small and noncontiguous portion of Acadia National Park is a big driver in this summer’s climbing visitation.

The Schoodic district — across Frenchmans Bay to the east of Mount Desert Island, where most of Acadia is located — encompasses just 5% of the park and garners fewer than one in 10 of the park's overall visitors in a typical year.

But this summer it is seeing a record level of visitation, with 81,498 visitors in July, compared with 69,879 the same month last year, a 16% gain, Adam Gibson, a social scientist with the National Park Service, told the Acadia National Park Advisory Commission at its triannual meeting on Monday.

By contrast, the number of July visitors to the MDI portion of the park was nearly flat, showing 663,617, compared with 662,677 a year ago.

Schoodic’s year-to-date number was up a fair bit, too, showing 177,505 visitors compared with 157,948, a 12% increase.

“We’re seeing a record high level of visitation to Schoodic in the last year,” said Gibson.

For August, daily Schoodic traffic counts were almost consistently above the previous four years and showed two particularly sharp peaks. One was during a local showcase called the Schoodic Arts Festival. The other was higher and occurred later in the month during Hurricane Erin, when visitors traveled to the shore to see the waves being kicked up by the storm.

January to August visitation to Schoodic was 17% higher than 2024.

Increased visitation at Schoodic could be caused by the growth of off-island accommodations, particularly in Ellsworth, which is almost the same distance to popular spots on Acadia’s Mount Desert Island portion as to the Schoodic portion, said Gibson.

Overall numbers

Acadia National Park had a total of 3,961,663 recreational visitors in 2024, of which 336,657 went to the Schoodic Peninsula. Visitor numbers peaked in 2021 when people were looking for outdoor adventures, and Acadia tallied just over 4 million visitors (of which 341,163 visited Schoodic).

Overall, Acadia is experiencing a high level of visitation that approaches 2021’s record number.

“We’re not quite at 2021 levels, but we’re very close,” he said.

Spring visitation was a little lower than 2021. But July and August numbers were higher than 2021, he said.

In August, Acadia had 842,827 visitors, compared with 795,332 during the same month last year, a 6% change; and 2,739,018 year-to-date, compared with 2,656,732 at the same point last year, a 3.1% change.

June had 631,333 visitors, compared with 599,015 the same month last year. July had 797,030 visitors, compared with 791,029 the same month last year.

Use of the park’s carriage road system is up 22% over 2024. Trail counts on Cadillac Mountain are up 20% over last year.

“Both July and August were record months,” Gibson said.