It was the busiest, highest visitation Indigenous Peoples Day weekend in the history of the park.

Carrie Jones

just now

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.

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MOUNT DESERT—Acadia National Park Deputy Superintendent Brandon Bies sat at a table at the Mount Desert Town Office with administrators and staff from area towns during a League of Towns meeting, Tuesday, and told them that there is no fall shoulder season in the park.

“People always want to know how’s visitation in the park,” he said to the members of the regional organization that links town staff—such as planning directors and managers—together in a once-a-month meeting to discuss issues in the area.

It’s busy.

The visitation, he said, is increasing compared to the 2016 Indigenous Peoples Day weekend.

Compared to the visitation a decade ago, the October holiday weekend was 37% higher.

“And so (I) can let folks know that we did just have this past Indigenous Peoples Day weekend—a week or so ago—was the busiest, highest visitation Indigenous Peoples Day weekend in the history of the park, which is saying something, because last year we had a government shutdown during the same time period and our visitation was off the charts because there was, you know, there was no one at the entrance station, no one charging,” Bies said.

Automated counters kept track of vehicles entering the national park on Mount Desert Island and found that there were almost 600,000 visits to the park in October 2025. Bies did not share this year’s exact numbers at the League of Towns’ meeting.

The park has been averaging approximately 70,000 visits in November and 17,000 in December.

Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island can be accessed by road or by boat. Cruise ships that had also visited nearby Bar Harbor have been regulated and substantially decreased. That regulation was considered unconstitutional in certain months, earlier this year after a multi-year lawsuit of some local businesses and river pilots against the town.

Because the park couldn’t take in the fees during the government shut down in 2025, they lost money. That, Bies said, meant the park lost between $1 million and $1.5 million in park fees during that 1% increase when the government—but not the park—was closed.

“For about 43 days or so, unable to collect any entrance fees whatsoever,” he said. “So, of course, the park was still being used. We were still having to, you know, take care of the park and park infrastructure, but we lost a substantial chunk of revenue, which has kind of a ripple effect of budget implications for the park that we are working through presently.”

The visitation, he said, is really skyrocketing.

“I hear a lot about shoulder seasons at Acadia. And while I think it probably is true (that) there probably is a spring shoulder season,” he said. “You know, May, early June, I think we can still call a shoulder season. There is not a fall shoulder season. It is a misnomer for people to say or to frankly push fall as a shoulder season.”

There is a dip in the first weeks of September, but then October with its fall foliage comes. With that foliage comes leaf peepers, tourists focused on the beauty of the trees turning colors.

According to Bies in the first two weeks of October, the visitation numbers can compare to the first two weeks in August. That has been traditionally thought of as the national park’s busiest time of the year.

“The daily visitation is identical. So the peak, peak, peak summer, the first two weeks in October are a carbon copy,” he said.

October is thought of as part of a fall shoulder season because visitation is looked at monthly. Eventually, he said, that visitation falls off a cliff so that October numbers look more like June.

However, he said, there’s a caveat to that.

“The reality is, for the two or three weeks that people are here (in October), it is absolutely off the charts,” Bies said. “Some of our park staff were looking at this because we’ve said, not only is October busy, it feels even busier to us.”

They wondered what was different between now and then?

“We have two or three less hours of daylight, right? And so that visitation is actually compressed,” he said.

That makes the visitation between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. in October substantially higher in the park even than in August. The visits are less spread out throughout the day.

“From a park congestion perspective, it is notably a lot more. It is notably busier,” he said.

In the summer and main visitor seasons, interactions visitors have are often with seasonal employees.

“The majority, if you’re a visitor to Acadia during our main visitor season, and you have an interaction with a park ranger, a custodian, someone rescues you on a trail, a ranger at the visitor center, statistically speaking, that’s going to be a seasonal employee,” Bies explained. “Most of our seasonal employees are here for six months.”

So, those employees leave even when visitors keep arriving.

It’s more than that though.

“We also, our infrastructure, our bathrooms… We have numerous outdoor restroom facilities and things. We have buildings. They are not meant for below freezing temperatures,” he explained.

Water to restrooms generally has to be turned off by the first week or so of October, because if the area gets a freeze, pipes burst and infrastructure has to be repaired.

“So our ability to manage, interact with, support, assist those visitation surge that we have on Indigenous Peoples Day weekend and beyond is challenged because we don’t have this. Our staff are leaving at that point. Our buildings are closing at that point. So that’s something that we are having to adjust to within the park and come up with creative ways and just recognizing it,” Bies said.

The park has consistently being working on decreasing vehicle congestion within its boundaries, including the Island Explorer bus system’s beginnings in 1999, and mandating reservations for drivers heading up Cadillac Mountain.

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QUICK NOTE: We’ve reached out to the park for those exact numbers, but have not yet heard back. If we do, we’ll update the story. The park’s website does not yet have numbers for October because we are still in October.

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