Acadia had its busiest October ever

Acadia National Park just had its busiest October ever.
The National Park Service estimates Acadia had 567,466 visits last month. That was 10,000 more visits than the park had during October in 2021, which was its busiest year on record with just over 4 million total visits across all months.
Since the COVID pandemic upended travel habits in the U.S., the park has been getting busier, including in the fall, consistently drawing more than half a million visits during October.
Last month also included the busiest day ever in the park — regardless of time of year — when 3,636 vehicles drove through the Sand Beach entrance station on Oct. 13, the Sunday of Indigenous People’s Day weekend. The previous record for traffic through the entrance station was on Sunday, July 3, 2022 — also a holiday weekend — when 3,561 vehicles drove through.
With the 567,466 visits last month, Acadia so far is within 10,000 visits of the total for 2023, when it had 3,879,890. The 10-month total so far this year is 3,869,744.
Visitation to the park routinely takes a nosedive in November when, since 2020, the number of visits has hovered around 70,000 to 80,000. They fall even further in December, hovering around 15,000 to 20,000 visits.
If those typical numbers hold up over the next two months, Acadia could come close to or surpass the 3.95 million visits it had for all of 2022, its second-busiest year on record.
Correction: An earlier version of this story cited an incorrect figure for the park’s 2023 visit total.