The Schoodic Peninsula, on the eastern side of Frenchman Bay, has long been considered the quiet part of Acadia National Park, far removed from the summer crowds that fill parking lots of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island.
But this year the Schoodic section of the park, and its abutting towns of Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor, don’t quite resemble the sparse locales that many residents remember from a few years ago.
The Schoodic Peninsula is on pace to have its busiest summer ever — busier even than 2021, when Acadia as a whole surpassed 4 million visits for the first time in its 107-year history. That’s setting it apart from the portion of Acadia on MDI, where visits have remained high but leveled off some.
“We’ve definitely had an increase in the amount of people in town — pedestrians, vehicles and bikes,” Winter Harbor Town Manager Cathy Carruthers said. “You have to wait for cars to pass when you back out of the post office parking lot. You usually don’t have to do that.”
But that’s not the only thing Carruthers said that indicates local seasonal traffic has grown.
“We’ve noticed a large increase in the volume of trash pickup,” she said. “It’s a funny place to notice it.”
From 2010 through 2014 the Schoodic section of the park averaged a little more than 180,000 visits per year. Then, from 2015 — when Schoodic Woods Campground first opened — through 2020, it went up to an average of 270,000 visits a year.
In 2021 the annual tally rose even further. As pandemic-weary tourists sought to spend more time outdoors, the number of visits to Schoodic soared to just over 340,000. Last year it had 323,000 visits.
This year it could top 354,000 — double what it was just nine years ago.
The greater numbers of visitors to the Schoodic Peninsula reflects increased seasonal congestion on MDI, where there has been some citizen pushback in recent years against the robust growth of the tourist industry, including more strict limits on cruise ships that voters approved last fall. As traffic on the island surpasses the comfort levels of some visitors, more of them are heading further Down East to try to escape the crowds.
But Carruthers said the increase in visitors to Winter Harbor can be directly linked to the 2015 opening Schoodic Woods Campground, which was built on a 1,400-acre forested parcel that was anonymously donated to Acadia.
“We know the campground brings a lot of people to town,” Carruthers said, adding that many campers enjoy biking the 1.5-mile distance from the campground into Winter Harbor’s scenic seaside village. “It’s been great for local businesses.”
Susie Bickford, owner of Chase’s restaurant, a longtime fixture in Winter Harbor, said Friday that the restaurant’s summer has been about as busy as it was in 2022. But she said there seems to be more businesses open than there were just a couple of years ago, so there are more shops and eateries to absorb the influx of people.
Chase’s usually does a brisk business in the summer, she said, and while she is happy to have customers, she said she has not fully gotten used to the increased summer bustle in town. She now looks forward more to winter than she used to, she said, so she can recover from the hectic pace of the tourist season.
“It’s busier now,” Bickford said, thinking back to how quiet Winter Harbor was a decade ago. “There [are] more people.”
