Crews out in record numbers for trail work

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Acadia National Park’s trail maintenance division has hired the most workers in 70 years to begin creating new trails, restoring others and building connector trails from island communities into the park.

All those plans are part of the park’s newest trail management plan approved recently by the National Park Service.

Acadia officials expect the plan will take 10 to 15 years to complete. It is the most significant trail effort in recent history.

“It’s all very big and very exciting,” Gary Stellpflug, Acadia trails foreman, said Monday as his seasonal workers began clocking in for their first day of work.

“We’ve got the biggest crew since the CCC days,” he said, referring to the Depression-era Civil Conservation Corps, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a program to both put Americans back to work and build infrastructure in the nation’s national parks.

Stellpflug said 28 federal park employees have been hired for summer and fall trail work, along with three contracted groups of eight workers each, most of them Mainers and most from the Hancock County region.

In addition, the Friends of Acadia’s 16-member Youth Conservation Corps will join the effort, as well as volunteers and short-term members of the state-backed Maine Conservation Corps.

The new trail management plan calls for a number of projects, including:

. Building five connector trails from island towns to park trails to reduce traffic and congestion and revive a lost tradition of people walking from town to the park and its many mountains.

Two of the connectors already have been completed, one from Bar Harbor proper to the park and another from Southwest Harbor;

. The addition of five miles of new trails;

. Restoring 7.5 miles of abandoned trials – some dating back as far as the turn of the 20th century;

. Rehabilitating 130 miles of existing trails; and

. Evaluating all trails earmarked for improvements, as well as new trails, for possible handicap accessibility.

Charlie Jacobi, an Acadia research management specialist who helped develop the new plan, said all efforts will be made to preserve the historic, cultural and environmental resources of the park.

He said no new trails will be added to the central park area.

Stellpflug said work began on the extensive improvement plan three years ago, although the plan was only recently officially approved by the National Park Service.

Acadia and its partners expect to begin aggressively tackling the work this year.