TRENTON — Visitors and locals alike now have a one-stop shop for visiting Maine’s national park and other hotspots.

The Acadia Gateway Center along State Route 3 in Trenton is a transit and welcome center that’s been over 20 years in the making and just opened its doors this week.

“It’s a combination of providing a place of entrance and a first look of ‘hey, you’re coming to a great place in Maine.’ And, you also have options for transportation where you don’t necessarily need to drive,” said Jarod Farn-Guillette, Region 4 & 5 planner for the Maine Department of Transportation. “It’s really a transit hub for locals and people visiting the great state of Maine.”

Farn-Guillette added that the planning process for the building began back in 2002.

“This is the most complex, I’d say, vertical construction that the Department of Transportation has done,” said Farn-Guillette. “It is a technological one-off. It’s a very unique building. And so, like with any normal construction project, things just pop up.”

Its opening comes as Acadia National Park continues to see record-breaking visitation. 

Officials are hoping the center's bus and parking options will help alleviate some of the congestion on State Route 3 and the park itself.

The center has 300 parking spaces, including 18 electric vehicle chargers and 10 oversized vehicle spaces.

“Part of the goal of this is to mitigate traffic volumes on State Route Three into Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island,” said Farn-Guillette. “But also, to showcase that there’s much to do in the larger region.”

From the facility, visitors will be able to park their cars and hop on the Island Explorer bus to see the sights.

“With being the seventh most visited national park in our country, we want visitors to ride the bus,” said Kevin Schneider, superintendent at Acadia National Park. “When you ride the bus, you don’t have to worry about finding a place to park, which on a busy summer day can often be a challenge.”

And park rangers will be on hand to help visitors before they head out.

“We will have a presence here through the summer,” said Schneider. “And we’ll have opportunities for rangers to answer questions for visitors; people can pay for their entrance passes here with a ranger.”

Other welcome center staff will be available, as well.

“We work with the Maine Office of Tourism to provide all the visitor services here,” said Tony Cameron, CEO of the Maine Tourism Association. “And we also work with the Maine DOT to provide the cleaning services, as well.”

Officials said the building came together through collaboration between several partners, including the Maine DOT, the National Park Service, the Maine Tourism Association and Friends of Acadia.

According to Maine DOT, “visitor facilities include free day-use parking, a bus stop for Island Explorer and commercial tour buses, an 11,000-square-foot information center with park and regional tourism information, retail space, restrooms, and a waiting area.”

Officials said the building will be operational from May through October each year.

“It will help to be able to get visitors to explore more of what Maine has to offer, that’s one of the benefits of this,” said Cameron. “But it’s also a way to help educate visitors before they get to the island.”

Visit friendsofacadia.org to learn more.