Tag Archives: national-park-service

Acadia car reservations sales delayed, fired workers rehired

Acadia National Park car reservations on Cadillac Mountain are off to a rocky start this year, hampered by two delays in the release of tickets during the chaos of the new administration in Washington.

Acadia car reservations are required starting May 21 for people who want to drive up Cadillac. Reservations were originally set to be released online on Feb. 20. The release was then delayed to March 22 and then last week, with little time to spare, it was postponed again to April 15.

When asked about the delays, the National Park Service Office of Public Affairs stated, “As part of the broader efforts led by the Department of Interior under President Trump’s leadership, we are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency and government accountability. While we do not comment on personnel matters, the National Park Service remains steadfast in its commitment to serving the American public and preserving the natural and cultural resources entrusted to our care.”

Cadillac Mountain, the highest peak on the US eastern coast, is rated the most popular attraction in the Maine national park. More than 200,000 vehicle reservations were sold in 2024, allowing people to visit the peak from sunrise to sunset.

Another sold-out crowd for sunrise on Cadillac Mountain in August 2022 (Photo by Kate Sheehan)

Chaos in Washington means you’ll have to wait longer to make Acadia car reservations for sunrise atop Cadillac Mountain, like this spectacular one over Frenchman Bay in August 2022. (Photo by Kate Sheehan)

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8 fired, adding to staff shortages at Acadia National Park

Update 2/28/2025: Statement from National Park Service was added to this story.

Eight full-time employees at Acadia National Park have been suddenly fired, sparking a local backlash and raising concerns about further cuts to services for the public because of staff shortages at Acadia.

Help wanted in Acadia

Ironically, Acadia and partners recently hosted in-person and virtual resume workshops to boost hiring for the upcoming busy season. (NPS image)

The terminations at Acadia are among 1,000 probationary employees who were terminated at the National Park Service across the country as part of President Donald J. Trump’s widespread cuts in the federal government. The 1,000 employees had worked for the NPS for less than a year.

Many people are upset about the staff shortages at Acadia in the wake of the terminations. The terminations constitute almost 10 percent of  the approximately 90 permanent employees at the park.

“The whole thing is a complete tragedy…not just for the national parks but for the individuals who staff the parks,” said Maureen Robbins Fournier, a former longtime seasonal ranger at Acadia National Park. “Real people, not numbers.”

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Major deficit in hiring hits work on hiking paths in Acadia

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.

Birch grove in Acadia National Park

Hobbled by a lack of seasonal workers in 2024, the Acadia Trail Crew canceled plans to temporarily close Hemlock Path and build a boardwalk through the birch grove on the path. It’s currently uncertain if the prominent project will be completed in 2025.

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Acadia carriage tours operator loses contract to ex-workers

A dark-horse candidate has captured a new 10-year contract to provide carriage tours in Acadia National Park, leaving the former operator shocked and frustrated about losing the business after many years.

The National Park Service’s regional director in Philadelphia awarded the concession contract for Wildwood Stables to a company headed by two of the prior operator’s former employees, Kari Goraj, and her husband, James Bartick, of Orland.

Two horse carriage ride in Acadia National Park

A two-horse carriage ride departs from Wildwood Stables in Acadia National Park in July 2022. (Photo by Lianne Saladino Pompeo)

The NPS rejected a bid from Carriages of Acadia, led by president Michael E. Carpenter, former state attorney general and state senator from Houlton, which held the contract for the narrated carriage tours in Acadia for 15 years, including several extensions totaling five years. The stable operation and carriage rides had about $850,000 in sales in a recent year, according to an NPS report on the business opportunity for Wildwood Stables.

In an interview, Carpenter called it a “real kick in the gut” to lose the concession to old friends and employees after all the blood, sweat and tears that he and his daughter, Emily Carpenter, who served as general manager, put into the business. “I don’t know how it happened,” he said. “I was stunned.” Continue reading →

New Acadia hiking trails foreman takes reins at key time

A new foreman is leading the way for work on Acadia hiking trails.

David Schlag

David Schlag, the new foreman of the Acadia trails crew, stands outside the crew’s trailer in Acadia National Park.

David Schlag, a 14-year veteran of the crew, is taking over as Acadia National Park trails crew foreman at a time when the park is facing some headwinds: trail damage from extreme weather events, increasing wear and tear on the trails with record crowds and a continuing shortage of seasonal workers.

Schlag will also oversee what could be one of the more transformational projects in years for Acadia hiking trails. The National Park Service is planning several trail extensions and a rehabilitation of the birch-lined Hemlock Path to make it more accessible, possibly with a boardwalk, as part of a more comprehensive effort to restore the Great Meadow.

acadia national park

This section of Hemlock Path with its birch trees is much photographed, and set for a major overhaul to improve drainage and accessibility as part of the restoration of Acadia’s Great Meadow. It’s one of the projects to be overseen by David Schlag, the new Acadia trails foreman.

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Lupine wildflowers of Acadia and monarchs in coming clash?

Cross over to Bar Island at low tide in June and July, and soon you’ll discover fields of majestic purple, blue and pink lupine wildflowers of Acadia, beckoning to be admired and photographed.

Lupine blooming on Bar Island in Acadia National Park.

Western lupine blooms in early June on Bar Island. The flower is popular with tourists who sometimes stop to pose for photos next to the purple, blue or pink flowers.

Squeezed along the edge of the fields stands a less showy plant – common milkweed – which could be missed if not for a sign calling this place a “Milkweed Habitat.”

These fields may be the site of a coming showdown between lupine and milkweed that could affect the fate of monarch butterflies in Acadia National Park.

As photogenic as the spiky tall flowers of the western lupine are, they are invasive non-native plants, threatening to crowd out the homelier milkweed critical to the lifecycle of the monarch, which recently became candidate for listing under the US Endangered Species Act. The faceoff between lupine and milkweed and the monarch could eventually come to a head on the island, just off the coast of Bar Harbor.

Acadia National Park seeks to protect milkweed habitat

An effort by the National Park Service to protect the soon-to-be-endangered Monarch butterfly includes spreading seeds for milkweed on Bar Island and staking signs to inform the public.

“If the western lupine is encroaching on critical habitats in the park…it would be a very high priority to remove it,” said Amanda S. Pollock, Acadia public affairs officer, in an email. In years past, the park’s Invasive Plant Monitoring Team “removed lupines encroaching on a significant area of milkweed to protect habitat for the soon to be listed as endangered monarch butterfly.”

Pollock said the team has managed lupine encroaching on milkweed on Bar Island, Fernald Point, and a small area near Great Meadow Drive. She said the team has removed lupine on Bar Island “but only a section of the field, near the milkweed and the path.”

The park has not planted any mature milkweed, but resource managers have spread seed in areas where milkweed would likely grow well, including Bar Island, Pollock added.

Western lupine competes for space with milkweed, which is vital for survival of monarch butterflies.

Which plant’s tendency to spread will win out: Invasive western lupine, on the left, or the later-to-bloom milkweed on the right? Monarch butterflies exclusively lay their eggs on milkweed, as the developing caterpillars need the milkweed sap for chemical defense against predators. This scene played out on Bar Island in Acadia National Park in early July.

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Best spot for sunrise in Acadia is sold-out show atop Cadillac

Cadillac Mountain may be the best spot for sunrise in Acadia National Park, or maybe even the entire US. Just try to get a ticket to the show – it can be as hard as scoring an entry to a Taylor Swift concert.

Summer sunrise on Cadillac Mountain

Another sold-out crowd for sunrise on Cadillac Mountain in August 2022 (Photo by Kate Sheehan)

A $6 reservation is required to drive a car up Cadillac summit from late May to late October and virtually 100 percent of the tickets were sold out over the online reservation system for sunrise during 2021 and 2022. The demand for a parking spot on Cadillac during sunrise is so intense that tickets can “literally sell out in seconds,” the superintendent of the park told the Acadia National Park Advisory Commission last year.

In 2022, for example, NPS statistics show that there were 21,895 tickets available for sunrise on Cadillac and 21,882 were sold.

Leah Bullard was one of the lucky ones to land a ticket for the best spot for sunrise in Acadia. The Alexandria, Va., woman said she set an alarm for the 10 am start of availability for advance purchase of tickets at recreation.gov for a May 31 sunrise on Cadillac, and then kept refreshing the page once the tickets became available. In about two minutes, she got one.

“Everyone told me, ‘The one thing you need to do in Acadia is see the sunrise from Cadillac’,” Bullard said in an interview. “It was beautiful.”

The rising sun shines on Leah Bullard atop Cadillac Mountain on May 31, 2023.

The rising sun shines on Leah Bullard atop Cadillac Mountain on May 31, 2023. Bullard said friends told her that sunrise on Cadillac was the “one thing” she needed to do in Acadia National Park. (Photo provided by Leah Bullard)

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Acadia staff shortage spurs plan to expand seasonal housing

UPDATE 6/15: Retired Acadia National Park trail crew foreman cites byzantine hiring practices as reason for Acadia staff shortage.

Acadia National Park is planning to build 50 to 60 units of new housing in Bar Harbor for seasonal workers off Kebo Street, in a bid to reduce a severe Acadia staff shortage in the half-year workers.

Acadia National Park seasonal housing at Harden Farm

These existing 1960s-style apartment units for Acadia National Park seasonal employees would be built out to 50 to 60 units under a park plan for the property off Kebo Street in Bar Harbor.

Brandon Bies, deputy superintendent of Acadia National Park, said the park hired 114 seasonal workers so far this year, when it advertised for hiring 174 to work typically from April to October. Bies said the staff shortfall is coming when the park is “going to be right up there” around 4 million visits for the third year in a row, straining resources.

Bies said the Acadia staff shortage will affect rehabilitation of hiking trails and repair of carriage roads.

“Those projects are going to take longer and we are going to be able to complete fewer of those,” he told the Acadia National Park Advisory Commission on Monday.

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Transit and visitor center aimed at cutting traffic at Acadia

TRENTON – US Sen. Angus King and the state transportation chief helped celebrate the start of construction of a new $32 million welcome center and transit hub, saying it could dramatically reduce traffic at Acadia National Park and transform the way people visit.

Maine US Sen. Angus King at celebration for Acadia Gateway Center.

US Sen. Angus King, independent from Maine and chair of the Senate subcommittee on National Parks, speaks at an event to celebrate the start of construction of the Acadia Gateway Center. On King’s right is Paul Murphy, executive director of Downeast Transportation Inc., and on his left, Fred Ehrlenbach, first selectman for the town of Trenton.

The Acadia Gateway Center, located off Route 3 in Trenton, is planned as a new regional tourism hub with 250 parking spaces and likely an express bus service into the national park. The center is aimed at getting more day trippers and commuters into the park’s fare-free Island Explorer bus service, thereby reducing congestion on  Route 3 near Mount Desert Island and cutting traffic at Acadia National Park, the No. 5 most visited US national park in 2022.

The Acadia Gateway Center, scheduled to open in May 2025, overcame many hurdles during 20 years of planning and debate and it remains unclear how many tourists and commuters will choose to leave behind their cars and hop on a bus at the center. The project’s ultimate success could hinge on efforts to hire more scarce bus drivers to provide the express service  and to boost affordable housing for drivers and other seasonal workers, people at the event said. Affordable housing is currently in such sort supply that 10 Island Explorer drivers lived out of their cars last year, according to the president of the Friends of Acadia.

The total project estimate of $31.66 million for the Gateway Center — as opposed to construction only — includes pre-construction work, according to a report in the Mount Desert Islander. Work before construction typically includes costs such as design, engineering and construction administration.

King, chair of the Senate subcommittee on National Parks, said the Acadia Gateway Center is a landmark project that can serve as a model for other national parks. People can park at the Gateway Center, get on a bus and enjoy Acadia without worrying about fighting traffic, pollution or the time it takes to find parking, said King, a Maine independent.

“The problem isn’t so much people in national parks,” said King at the event, attended by local, state and federal leaders. “It’s vehicles.”

Acadia Gateway Center

An aerial view of the planned Acadia Gateway Center, now under construction and set to open in May 2025. (Rendering provided by Maine Department of Transportation)

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Vandalism in Acadia taints popular mountains and trails

 Update 2/24/23: The National Parks Traveler picked up this story and put a national spotlight on the “paint-can-carrying hiker” who has been putting bright red blazes on rock cairns and trees in the park.

Update 2/24/23: Spring Trail added to list of damaged trails.

Winter is not even off-season for vandalism in Acadia.

Bright red paint defacing about two miles along the Spring Trail, the Penobscot Mountain Trail on the south ridge of the mountain and the Deer Brook Trail has been reported to the National Park Service, which is now investigating.

Historic-style cairn defaced with red paint on the south ridge of Penobscot Mountain.

An illegal red blaze was painted on the mantle stone of this historic-style cairn on the Penobscot Mountain Trail. (Photo by Kevin Young)

The illegal red rectangular blazes frequently were painted right next to the park’s official sky-blue blazes on the historic hiking trails, according to photos posted on Facebook by a hiker and provided to Friends of Acadia and the park in early February. At least three dozen historic-style cairns, trees and bedrock locations were painted with the red blazes, according to interviews with two hikers who took photos.

This is the latest example of a growing problem in Acadia and other national parks, with vandals defacing the landscape with paint, rock stacking and even human and pet waste. Now, the vandalism in Acadia has happened in the dead of winter, when the hiking trails are often little used and icy.

The illegal painting off Penobscot, the fifth highest mountain in Acadia, follows a rise in the number of citations issued by the National Park Service for vandalism in Acadia over the past two years, compared to the three prior years, according to park statistics.

Acadia National Park cairn marred by red paint.

This red paint damage on a cairn on the Penobscot Mountain Trail is especially galling because it occurred right next to a National Park Service sign that asks people to leave cairns as they find them. Rangers are investigating the illegal activity. (Photo by Kevin Young)

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Bargain hunters buying up half-price Acadia annual pass

December is usually a slow time of year in Acadia National Park. But with the National Park Service proposing a 27 percent increase in the Acadia annual pass next year, the park holiday tradition of selling the annual entrance pass for about half price is bringing out the bargain hunters.

acadia national park

Get the Acadia annual pass for about half price in December, while they last, before the proposed 27 percent price increase in 2023. (NPS image)

The Acadia annual pass is currently on sale for $28 during the month of December. People can buy multiple discounted annual passes and many are buying them for holiday gifts, according to people selling the passes at three local chambers of commerce and four town offices. Also, there is a limited number available of annual passes at the reduced price and it’s possible they could sell out, at least at several locations, in the wake of the the NPS’s Nov. 29 announcement of its proposal to hike entrance fees at Acadia in 2023, people said.

“They are selling like hot cakes,” said Brianna Mitchell, deputy town clerk in Gouldsboro, which offers the discounted passes, and which includes Acadia’s Bar Island within its borders. “I am trying to tell people, if they call, to try and grab one sooner rather than later.”

The yearly sale of the pass is always popular, but Mitchell agreed the proposed fee increase for 2023 may be spurring some sales of the discounted pass this year.

The park’s Sand Beach Entrance Station is the primary location for sales of the discounted Acadia annual pass. The entrance station is open year-round and is planned to operate seven days a week in the winter, depending on staffing, with core hours 9 am to 3 pm during December, said John T. Kelly, management assistant in the superintendent’s office at Acadia National Park. “There is a limit, but I can’t predict whether they will sell out,” Kelly said of the discounted passes.

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Maine seeks bids for Acadia National Park welcome center

UPDATE on 2/8/2023: Nickerson O’Day of Brewer today submitted the low bid of $27,653,784.59 to construct the Acadia Gateway welcome center and transit hub in Trenton and will begin working with the state to secure the contract for the long-awaited project.

Like most MaineDOT projects, the state is aiming to award the contract to the low bidder, according to William Pulver, chief operating officer and deputy chief engineer for MaineDOT.

“The next step in our typical low bid process is an internal evaluation of the bids received and a review of any required bid submittals from the low bidder,” Pulver wrote. “Following that review, a recommendation is made to the Commissioner’s office.”

Under the state bid process, it should take about 6 weeks to award the contract if all is in order. 

The Maine Department of Transportation said it expects to break ground in 2023 on a new state-of-the-art, $32 million welcome center and transit hub for Acadia National Park and the region, marking a big step forward in a strategy to get more visitors to use the park’s fare-free shuttle and reduce traffic congestion.

Acadia Gateway Center

This design shows Island Explorer buses picking up visitors from the planned Acadia Gateway Center’s intermodal and welcome center, with a current state estimate of $32 million for the project. (NPS image)

The MaineDOT this week officially advertised for bids for a contractor to construct the national park welcome center and intermodal facility off Route 3 in Trenton about three miles north of the bridge to Mount Desert Island. The bids were scheduled to be publicly opened and read on Jan. 4 in Augusta but the bid opening was recently changed to Jan. 18, and then delayed again until Jan. 25, and postponed again to Feb. 8, according to the MaineDOT web site. The winner must agree to complete work by May 3, 2025 for the project, estimated by the department to cost $32.076 million.

Paul Merrill, director of communications for the MaineDOT,  said the department expects groundbreaking for the Acadia Gateway welcome center and intermodal facility to happen in the first half of 2023. The MaineDOT would own the project, which would be funded mostly by federal transit aid, in addition to $4 million from the National Park Service, state money and $1 million from the Friends of Acadia, a partner in planning since 2004.

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Acadia hiking trails chief roasted, toasted at retirement party

acadia hiking trails

Gary Stellpflug, now-retired Acadia trails crew foreman, in front of a map of some of Acadia’s historic trails.

The superintendent of Acadia National Park and other National Park Service employees and supporters gathered recently to bid farewell to retired Acadia hiking trails foreman Gary Stellpflug, sending him off with high praise and lots of laughs.

Stellpflug, who retired at the end of August, led an extensive rehabilitation and expansion of 155 miles of Acadia hiking trails over the past 20 years, made possible when Acadia became the first national park in the country with an endowment for a trail system.

People at the retirement party lauded Stellpflug’s expertise in stone masonry and  craftsmanship in trail building at Acadia. They said his work helped in the successful nomination of Acadia hiking trails to the National Register of Historic Places in April.

Retirement cake for Gary Stellpflug at Acadia National Park

At his retirement party, Gary Stellpflug was honored with a “Happy Trails” cake decorated with the names of Acadia hiking trails.

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Staff deficits hit Acadia visitor services, shut Cadillac at 10pm

Citing a shortage of seasonal staff this year, the park has closed Cadillac Mountain overnight to vehicles and stopped staffing the popular Village Green Information Center in Bar Harbor, among other moves to deal with a lack of workers for Acadia visitor services.

milky way from cadillac

It’s going to be harder to see the stars from Cadillac with the closing of the summit road after 10pm through late October, while the vehicle reservation system is in effect. (NPS photo by Sardius S. Stalker)

Even the Star Party at Cadillac, one of the more in-demand events of the Acadia Night Sky Festival in September, has been cancelled “due to limited capacity and staffing constraints,” according to the festival website.

But perhaps the biggest impact to Acadia visitor services is the elimination of park staff at the Village Green Information Center, ending a longtime presence of rangers in downtown Bar Harbor during the busy season. According to former ranger Maureen Robbins Fournier, rangers sold park entrance and commercial passes, swore in hundreds of Junior Rangers every year, and helped people plan visits and Acadia hiking, among other services, with lines sometimes out the doors during cruise ship season.

“We are not staffing it this year due to limited staff availability,” Sean Bonnage, public affairs assistant for Acadia, told us in an email.  “We don’t have plans to staff it in the future, although ideally we would like to.”

The Village Green Information Center is owned by the town of Bar Harbor and is leased as an operations center to Downeast Transportation, the nonprofit that operates the Island Explorer on Mount Desert Island. It is still being used as an operations center this year, with the Island Explorer operating a full schedule for the first time since 2019, and is open to the public, only with no rangers present for Acadia visitor services. It was first staffed by rangers 20 years ago.

Village Green Information Center in Bar Harbor

Limited staff at Acadia prompted the National Park Service to decide against staffing the Village Green Information Center this summer. Hundreds of Junior Rangers used to be sworn in by park rangers at this location every year.

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Best place for sunset on Cadillac is now…the West Lot?

Acadia National Park visitors in search of sunset on Cadillac Mountain know from social media and the Internet that the best place to watch sunset is from the Blue Hill Overlook. But late last year, workers removed the sign for the overlook and put up one that says “West Lot” instead.

cadillac mountain sunset

Crowds start to gather for the best place to see the sunset on Cadillac Mountain, whether it’s called the West Lot, Blue Hill Overlook or Sunset Point.

And before the spot was named for its view west to Blue Hill in the late 1980s, visitors knew to flock to what was then called Sunset Point, as the official park map labeled it. But the crowds got so bad, “to alleviate evening traffic congestion, the National Park Service changed the name in 1988 from Sunset Point to Blue Hill Overlook,” according to the new and definitive book, Place Names of Mount Desert Island and the Cranberry Islands, Maine, by Henry A. Raup.

As Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Whether it’s called the West Lot, Blue Hill Overlook or Sunset Point, the view of the sunset on Cadillac from this very spot is, indeed, just as sweet. And visitors will eventually find it.

The renaming of Blue Hill Overlook to the West Lot is just the latest chapter in the long history of changing place names in Acadia and surrounding areas.  Even the park itself went through several name changes, from the Sieur de Monts National Monument in 1916, to Lafayette National Park in 1919 and finally Acadia National Park in 1929.

sunset on cadillac

No matter what you call it, this is the sweetest place to watch the sunset on Cadillac, even if it will get crowded during the peak season with visitors setting up lawn chairs, picnic blankets and cameras on tripods.

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