Though fewer international visitors are coming to Maine and the numbers of cruise ship passengers in Bar Harbor have dropped off sharply this summer, Acadia National Park had its busiest month ever in July.
The reason, according to tourism industry officials, could be the dry weather Maine had last month.
While visitation to the park has been historically high since the COVID pandemic, the record traffic through Acadia National Park comes at a time when economic and cultural factors such as threats of tariffs from the Trump administration and resulting soured relationships with traditional American allies have created economic uncertainty and slowed traffic across the border from Canada.
The total estimated number of visits to the park in July was 797,000, according to National Park Service data. The park’s previous record for monthly visitors was in August 2021, when it had roughly 795,500.
Aside from the drop in international visitors, Maine tourism officials have been hard-pressed to discern any other clear trends in visitation to the state this summer.
Tony Cameron, head of the Maine Tourism Association, a trade group, said there are clear indications that fewer Canadians have been coming to Maine, but that the only other consistent factor about this season has seemed to be inconsistency for the association’s visitor centers and for many tourism businesses.
Weatherwise, however, July was very consistent in one way, he added. The month was — as August continues to be — very dry, which may have resulted in more tourists deciding on short notice to make the trip.
“You never rule out weather,” Cameron said of reasons why people come to Maine during the busy tourist summer season. “The weather in July was really good. There are a lot of people who make last-minute decisions, and that is especially true of Acadia.”
While the lack of rain might cause concern for gardeners and fire safety officials, it often results in people driving to Maine from nearby Northeast states to visit Acadia, national park officials have noted in the past.
Last month, the Bangor area got less than one inch of rain spread out over July’s 31 days, which is more than 2 inches below normal, according to the National Weather Service data.
The lack of rain on Wednesday had raised the wildfire risk to “very high” through much of the state, according to the Maine Forest Service, though Maine’s drought conditions are rated only as “abnormally dry” within 60 or so miles of the coast, which is the most mild level, according to U.S. Drought Monitor.
Amanda Pollock, spokesperson for Acadia, said that weather is considered the “number one predictor” for how many people visit the park on any given day or weekend. She said that even if people might make last-minute decisions to come visit Acadia, they can ease the impact of their visit and the resulting crowds by using the Island Explorer bus to get in and around the park, and leave their vehicles wherever they are staying or at the visitor’s center site in Trenton.
“That’s hugely helpful,” Pollock said.
The pattern of increased visitation at Acadia, and the fairly dry conditions this summer, coincide with consistent signs of climate change in Maine that include a rapidly warming Gulf of Maine and periods of drought that are broken up by intense storms that bring heavier amounts of rain.
At the same time, and especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Acadia has been getting historically high numbers of visitors. It surpassed 4 million visits for the year for the first time ever in 2021 and in each of the three completed years since, has had roughly 3.9 million visits, easily beating the pre-COVID annual totals of roughly 3.5 million from 2017 through 2019.