A major shortfall in seasonal employees the past two years has caused some serious difficulties in maintaining hiking paths in Acadia National Park and providing other services during the peak season.

In 2024, the park was only able to hire four seasonal staff on the Acadia Trail Crew, even though funding allowed for 22 people, according to Amanda Pollock, public affairs officer for the park. That meant the park could only accomplish two major trail projects – the Great Meadow Village Connector Trail and the Bubbles Divide Trail – and had to postpone building a boardwalk through a much-photographed birch grove on Hemlock Path to protect the environmentally sensitive area.

Overall, the park each year attempts to hire between 150 to 175 seasonal employees but has only hired 115 seasonal employees each of the last two years with a key reason being a lack of affordable housing near the park, according to Pollock.

Ranger programs also reduced by lack of seasonal hiring

In addition to affecting maintenance of hiking paths in Acadia, the shortfall in hiring resulted in some key services being cut including ranger programs.

The park had funding to hire 45 seasonal fees staff but could hire only 21. Campgrounds had reduced staff with shorter hours, meaning the park could not serve people who arrived late, she added. Because of lack of staff, the park also closed the Islesford Museum on Sept. 7 when it is usually kept open all of September, Pollock told us.

A myriad of factors causes the hiring shortfall, but the lack of access to housing is a key reason. She cited a study by the National Park Foundation that found it is nearly impossible for Acadia employees to find a rental for six months within an hour’s drive of park headquarters.

Staff shortages also made it challenging to respond to emergency or unplanned situations, she added. Because of low staffing, the trail crew spent the entire spring season on work to repair damage on Ocean Path caused by the major storms in January, with no time for additional work, she wrote in an email. The 2-mile-long Ocean Path is one of the most popular hiking paths in Acadia and runs along the pink granite coast past attractions like Thunder Hole and Otter Cliff.

Boardwalk through birch grove delayed on Hemlock Path

The trail crew planned a high-profile project that called for temporarily closing and rehabilitating the Hemlock Path through the Great Meadow, but the work – including a new boardwalk through an iconic birch grove – was not started.

One major project that was completed covered the western half of the Bubbles Divide Trail, a rugged and steep hiking trail in Acadia. The 0.3 mile section of the Bubbles Divide Trail rises from the north end of Jordan Pond to the intersection with the Bubbles Trail, which takes hikers up the North and South Bubble mountains overlooking Jordan Pond.

According to John T. Kelly, management assistant in the superintendent’s office at Acadia, about 315 stone steps were rehabilitated or added to the Bubbles Divide Trail as part of the work.

The trail had been sporadically constructed over the years by the NPS, the Appalachian Mountain Club and volunteers, leaving large sections of the trail where no work was done. Hikers sometimes bushwhacked off the trail, prompting more erosion and creating numerous unofficial social paths through fragile areas, Kelly told us in an email.

As part of the work, log checks and timber cribs were installed to protect gravel and soil on the trail surface and drainage ditches were improved to reduce storm runoff from the North and South Bubbles.

Great Meadow Loop work boosts hiking paths in Acadia

The Acadia trail crew, along with the Appalachian Mountain Club’s trail crew, also completed significant work on the Great Meadow Loop, among hiking paths in Acadia that connect to downtown Bar Harbor.

The Acadia trail crew worked on sections of the Great Meadow Loop inside the park including sections next to Great Meadow Drive, the Park Loop Road and Kebo Street, according to Stephanie Clement, conservation director for the Friends of Acadia.

The Friends of Acadia hired AMC’s trail crew to work on sections of the Great Meadow Loop outside the park, Clement wrote in an email.

In 2024, the AMC crew focused on a frequently used section of the trail from the Ledgelawn Cemetery’s property off Cromwell Harbor Road to Great Meadow Drive. AMC’s work on the section consisted of improving drainage and reducing the grade of the trail to prevent erosion and make it more accessible and a better match for the park’s standards.

The Friends of Acadia will also be hiring the AMC trail crew in 2025 to continue work on sections of the Great Meadow Loop outside the park, according to Clement.

Volunteers provide critical upkeep on hiking paths in Acadia

Volunteers with the FOA also pitched in with some significant projects on hiking paths in Acadia. Volunteers, for example, repaired and added bog walk on the Ship Harbor Trail, also seriously damaged during the January 2024 storms, replaced bog walk on the Cadillac South Ridge Trail between the Blackwoods Campground and Route 3, completed resurfacing of the Schooner Head Path, painted more than 100 new picnic tables and replaced bog walk on the Bowditch Trail on Isle au Haut.

The Acadia Youth Conservation Corps, which employs students for eight weeks each summer for trail and other types of work, also helped improve Acadia hiking trails including installing 296 feet of bog walk on the Great Notch Trail. As just a few examples their work, the AYCC also hiked 322 pounds of soil to the summit of Sargent Mountain to restore vegetation, removed overgrown vegetation from curbsides and sidewalks at the Cadillac Mountain summit and cleared 500 yards of drainage in the carriage roads around Eagle Lake.

It’s unclear right now if Acadia is looking at another peak season this year with a large shortage of seasonal employees. A strong economy is giving seasonal workers more job choices and there are few signs now of easing in a tight employment market.

Acadia National Park Superintendent Kevin Schneider raised the issue in 2022 when he told the Acadia National Park Advisory Commission that the park usually hires about 150 seasonal workers but that year hired about 120.

The park and FOA are taking several steps to boost seasonal hiring. Acadia National Park, with partners, is hosting workshops to help applicants improve resumes for federal jobs, with the next two coming up Jan. 11 and Feb. 4.

Projects under way to boost housing for seasonal workers

Aiming to ease the shortage of affordable housing, the Friends of Acadia is leading a major effort to provide more housing for park employees including purchasing an old inn in Southwest Harbor that housed 10 seasonal employees in 2024, buying six two-bedroom town homes in Trenton to provide housing for Island Explorer drivers starting in 2025 and completing eight bedrooms in two new buildings on Dane Farm in Seal Harbor.

The National Park Service has also awarded $10 million contract to build new apartments on an existing park apartment development off Kebo Street in Bar Harbor.