An exploratory study of visitor behaviors and resource impacts at Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park: Sign comparison study

Baldwin, Elizabeth; LaPage, Wilbur

From the executive summary: "There are some parks that have a place that everyone wants to go to before they leave. In Yellowstone it is Old Faithful, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park it is Clingman's Dome and for Acadia it is Cadillac Mountain. In a visitor survey done at Acadia National Park in 1999, 76% of the respondents said they visited Cadillac Mountain (Littlejohn, 1999). The popularity of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park makes for a fertile opportunity to conduct an unobtrusive field observational research study (Babbie, 1986). During the summer of 2002, researchers at the University of Maine observed the behavior of visitors to the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, their responses to two different signs at the trailheads to the summit loop trail, and their behavior on the summit loop trail. This research was done in response to a previous study to determine the source or Cairn removal on Cadillac (Turner, 2001). Turner noted that cairn removal was a family activity of people unaware of the importance of the Cairns, and that on Cadillac Mountain people walked wherever they wanted regardless of signs to stay off vegetation and soil. This study is further effort to explore depreciative behaviors causing a loss of soil and vegetation and possible solutions to mitigate these on Cadillac Mountain. Visitors to the study area were more likely to use durable surfaces when leaving the trail then was expected based on previous research (Turner, 2001). Depreciative behavior that did occur did not appear to be malicious in nature. Visitors were more likely to read signs that explained why the behavior norm was needed which leads to the conclusion that depreciative behavior can continue to be mitigated with a more clear interpretation as to the desired behaviors in this fragile ecosystem. Although a small percentage of the visitors to the summit loop trail were youths, they represented a large part of our off trail use, often noted with parents and other adults."