Jun 12, 2026
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Viridian Law.
ACADIA NATIONAL PARK—While Acadia National Park reported that its off-season visitation was the lowest since the COVID pandemic in 2020, the raw numbers for Memorial Day weekend made it the highest on record.
The raw traffic counts from the Sand Beach entrance shows that in 2026, there were 9,681 total, besting 2024 by 72.
That busy weekend comes even as Island Explorer—a free bus service—serviced the park and the less busy off-season between November 2025 and April 2026, when there were approximately 200,000 visits. This is an 11% drop from the previous season.
The weather this past Memorial Day weekend was mixed with a sunnier Saturday and Sunday, which is when the counts were the highest as compared to Friday and Monday.
In 2025, the park’s 4,079,318 visits was a record breaker. The next highest visits counted was in 2021 at 4,069,098. How the park uses raw data and counts its visitations involves mathematical equations and a focus on visitations rather than visitors. It counts visits, which means that the same visitors can make multiple visits.
Making staff even busier last month, on May 23, there was a single-vehicle crash on Cadillac Mountain.
“At approximately 11:40 a.m., park dispatch received a call reporting that a van was on its side and was obstructing traffic on Cadillac Summit Road. The NPS closed the road from approximately 2 to 3:30 p.m. to allow a tow truck to recover the vehicle,” said John T. Kelly, management assistant at the ANP Superintendent’s Office.
A baby seal on Sand Beach that worried many visitors was just fine.
“The seal pup at Sand Beach returned to the water and swam away on its own. Seals will often leave a pup on shore while they forage,” Kelly said. “Visitors sometimes think that a seal pup has been abandoned or stranded, but it is normal.”
Also, there were no significant emergency medical or search and rescue incidents reported in the park over Memorial Day weekend.
According to an article by the Bangor Daily’s Sabrina Martin about the low off-season numbers, “The lull over the winter and early part of the spring has not lasted, however. Last month, visitation hit 335,236, which was the highest May total in two years.”
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Second Busiest August in History? Possibly, Park Official Says
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