Wheelchair users gain access to Thunder Hole Acadia park gradually improving accessibility

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Access to one of Acadia National Park’s most popular attractions got a whole lot easier last week when crews completed a new concrete ramp connecting the parking lot and observation deck at Thunder Hole.

The $70,000 project is just the latest effort by the park to improve access to people with disabilities, according to James Vekasi, Acadia director of maintenance.

“We look at accessibility on every project we do,” he said. “Five years ago, we were lagging behind, but we’re getting there.”

The major reason Acadia came late to building handicapped-accessible facilities and ramps was that there was little money for park improvements. In recent years, with authority to use 80 percent of all gate fees on long-delayed infrastructure improvements, park crews are designing handicapped accessibility wherever possible, Vekasi said.

He said the park would not try to incorporate handicapped accessibility in places that are not being renovated anyway.

Some places will never be accessible to people in wheelchairs or on crutches – the towering cliffs, ladder trails and other areas where it’s not feasible, he said. But all of the parking lots are now accessible, bus shelters have been built in key areas to keep people out of the roadway, and trails are being expanded whenever possible to accommodate visitors with disabilities.

At Thunder Hole, one of the top destinations at Acadia, the restrooms in the parking lot were already handicapped-accessible, but there was no way to get from the parking lot down a steep decline to the other side of the road, where a ramp already led to a granite observation platform.

This summer, workers built a concrete ramp that zigzags from the parking lot down to the one-way Loop Road. On the opposite side of the road, a path was graded along the roadway to connect with the existing platform ramp.

But, Vekasi said, Thunder Hole is an example of the limitations the park faces in trying to increase handicapped accessibility. While more people will have access to the observation platform, the park cannot improve accessibility beyond that point.

From the observation platform, steep granite steps descend several feet to a concrete pier where visitors can get a closer view of Thunder Hole and often are sprayed by a geyserlike plume of water ejected from the rocky crevice as incoming waves crash against it. The name of the attraction is derived from the sound the water makes as it slams against the rock formation.

Paul Murphy, operations manager for the Island Explorer bus service, said Monday that handicapped accessibility is a priority for the bus operation as well.

The bus fleet, financed mostly by the park and Friends of Acadia, is handicapped-accessible. Murphy said opening more of the park to people with disabilities helps both the park and the visitors.

“Handicapped accessibility is a key issue,” he said. “Not only is it the law, but it’s just the way it should be. That’s part and parcel of our mission.”

According to Vekasi, the park this year also revamped the Frazer Point picnic area on Schoodic Point to accommodate people with disabilities, after constructing nearly a mile of trail along the Ship Harbor pathway last year to allow wheelchair users to get from the trail head to the lookout over the harbor.