Acadia tourists keep building rock cairns faster than stewards can dismantle them

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 15, 2026

Friends of Acadia (FOA) stewards dismantled up to 150 rock stacks above high-tide mark at Bar Island on August 9. “Friends of Acadia Summit Stewards support Acadia National Park rangers by dismantling misleading rock stacks throughout Acadia to protect trail integrity and for visitor safety,” Perrin Doniger, of FOA, said. On Sunday, as one Friends of Acadia steward was dismantling what the park refers to as rock graffiti, visitors and families — mostly children — were building more. “Last year, Friends of Acadia’s Summit Stewards dismantled 867 misleading rock stacks and repaired 822 cairns that mark safe hiking routes throughout Acadia,” Doniger said. Rock stacks are art to some. But critics say it runs counter to the ‘leave no trace’ principle of preserving natural spaces and minimizing human impacts on them, and that it can cause erosion and confuse hikers who mistake them for trail markers.