Acadia National Park sees 60% increase in MDI visitors so far in 2020

Photo / Laurie Schreiber Acadia National Park saw a big uptick in visitation in January and February. But the bar is low during the winter.

Write a Comment

By Laurie Schreiber

Warm weather the past couple of months might have contributed to a 67% increase in the number of recreational visitors to the Mount Desert Island portion of Acadia National Park this past January and February, compared with the same period in 2019.

In real numbers, that’s 12,586 in 2019 to 20,999 today, according to National Park Service data.

For February alone, there was a 64% increase, from 6,754 in 2019 to 11,059 last month.

Two factors might have contributed to the numbers, said Friends of Acadia President and CEO David McDonald.

One is that the numbers are compared with visitation that occurred during last year’s government shutdown, which happened between Dec. 22, 2018, and Jan. 25, 2019. Acadia remained accessible to walk-ins, but, McDonald said, “I think some people stayed away."

The other factor could be warmer weather.

“The park plows Ocean Drive and keep it opens unless things really get miserable,” McDonald said. “There’s been a lot of warm, sunny days and I think it’s been open most of this winter. In the winter, that’s a primary use area for folks to walk and drive. And the primary visitor counter is at Ocean Drive.”

Still, he said, the bar is low in the winter, compared with summer visitation numbers.

“So it’s not a surge,” he said. “I jut think folks are opportunistic. A lot of winter visitation is Maine residents. And if there’s a nice forecast, they’ll come and visit.”

Acadia’s public affairs specialist, Christie Anastasia, agreed: “I would speculate the increase in visitation was directly related to the warm winter. There were only about four days below 32° F and total accumulations for the month were less than the same month in the prior year.”

Anastasia drew attention to an article last week in National Park Traveler regarding visitation counts. It says, in part, that “head counts should be tossed aside” as “unreliable, unhelpful, and unsustainable.”