BAR HARBOR — Augusta has been a busy month at Acadia National Park, according to one park official.

Official numbers won’t be available for a few more weeks, according to Amanda Pollock, deputy chief of interpretation, so it remains to be seen if August numbers keep up with last month, which was the park's busiest July on record.

According to National Park data, the park had 797,030 recreational visitors in July — a marginal increase from last year.

“We had the busiest July on record,” Pollock said. “At least since we started measuring visits with the methodology that we adopted in 1990.” 

Pollock said tracking visits to the park helps to plan for the future.

“We’re interested in knowing how many footsteps are walking on our trails, how many wheels are going across our motor roads,” said Pollock. “It just helps us plan for the future and it helps us prioritize for projects that we know are going to need maintenance at some point in the future.”

Officials said this kind of attention makes sense because they tend to get higher visitation when the weather is fair.

“We know that our visitation is heavily driven by weather patterns,” said Pollock. “So, when it’s really nice outside, we see a lot more people in the park. We had beautiful weather all of July.” 

However, that also means more vehicle congestion in the park — which is why Pollock encourages visitors to use the Island Explorer bus service whenever possible as the summer season nears its close.

“We do know with visitors comes vehicles, and there’s often a lot of traffic congestion in and around the park,” said Pollock. “Any time that you can plan ahead and plan to use the island explorer when exploring the park, it relieves the stress of having to find a parking spot more than once and it lets you explore the park with a little bit more peace of mind.”