Most Beautiful Place in America — the Twenty Eleven Vote
Near Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan
In August of twenty eleven, the television program Good Morning America conducted an online poll asking viewers to vote for the most beautiful place in the United States. The choices included many celebrated landscapes from across the country.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore won. Viewers chose the Leelanau Peninsula dunes and shoreline over the Rocky Mountain parks and tropical beaches that might seem the obvious favorites. It was a result that surprised much of the country and delighted Michigan.
What followed was a significant practical problem. Visitation to the National Lakeshore is widely credited as having climbed after the vote, and in the years that followed there have been reports of crowding at the Dune Climb area, traffic backups on the access roads, and resource impacts from the increased foot traffic on the dune face.
The dunes are genuinely beautiful. The recognition was deserved. And the story of a park going from most beautiful to most crowded in the span of a single season is a useful parable about the consequences of winning certain kinds of attention.
