Internet-driven tourist attractions can overwhelm little towns

Contestants try to put on frozen T-shirts during a
Frozen Dead Guy Days. (Photo by Liz Carey)

Small towns are usually eager for tourism, but rare or once-a-year events that bring hordes of tourists for only a few days can cause headaches for locals, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder.

For example, nearly 25,000 tourists descend on Nederland, Colorado (pop. 1,500), for three days each year for Frozen Dead Guy Days. The holiday celebrates a local man frozen on dry ice in one town resident's freezers. "It’s something many small communities are dealing with as the internet alerts everyone to events and activities that they may not have heard about otherwise. Sometimes, while events and festivals like Frozen Dead Guy Days are boons to the places where they happen, the impact they have on small communities can be a hardship," Carey reports.

The occasional "super bloom" in Southern California, caused by unusually heavy rains, is another such tourist magnet. Lake Elsinore, the closest town to this year's biggest bloom, struggled to handle the influx, and reached out to other towns and the state and federal government for help with issues it didn't have jurisdiction over. And though it helped some local businesses, others lost money because traffic was so bad people couldn't shop, Carey reports.

"I would say that we are always balancing the needs of our residents with the needs of our visitors," said Nicole Dailey, assistant to the city manager in Lake Elsinore. "Because of the unpredictability of it, there was no way for us to plan; no way for us to estimate the number of people. Some of the measures we have had to take have been extreme, but I think now that the residents see what we’re trying to do, some of them have come around."