25 September 2023 , 15:13
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Visitors to a town that's famed for its gorgeous autumnal scenery have been banned after enraging residents.
In recent years Sleepy Hollow Farm in Vermont, USA, has become one of the go-to places for influencers. When the leaves begin to brown and fall, hoards of TikTokers and Instagrammers descend on the area in search of the perfect Instagram-worthy snap. Cloudland Road, and its particularly pleasant vistas, have been bearing the brunt of it. According to farmer Mike Doten, hundreds of cars at a time are left clogging up the road. On some days tour buses come and drop off great crowds of sightseers.
Sometimes visitors walk onto local's properties or sit on their porches for a rest. On occasion farmers have found day trippers enjoying a picnic on their fields. Later on those same people will find shelter behind a hedge to answer nature's call.
Sleepy Hollow has become known as a great place to witness the Vermont autumn (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Litter is becoming a problem, as is the sound of drones hovering over head in a bid to capture a shot of the landscape. "It was too much. Something had to be done," Mike told the Boston Globe. Earlier this year the town's residents voted to block Cloudland Road to anybody but residents for three weeks, from September 23 to October 15. Windsor County deputy sheriffs will staff checkpoints leading up to the road.
Locals say they never had a problem with the photographers who quietly and respectfully came to capture the landscape; their issue is with the influencers. Cathy Emmons, a farmer in the area, said those drawn by social media seem to be under the impression that the area is a public park. A few years ago she watched a young woman erect a portable changing booth so she could pose for photos in front of the trees in several different outfits.
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Another local resident, John Morley, said he was having dinner last year when a drone flew a few feet over his head. Barber Hill said she's watched visitors walk onto her land to steal tomatoes, seemingly unaware they were doing anything wrong. After successfully lobbying for the road block, residents aren't resting on their laurels. Some have started contacting influencers who have promoted the place online, urging them to take their posts down. “Those who have responded have been understanding and empathetic, saying they didn’t know it was causing such a problem for people who live here,” Mike added.
Sleepy Hollow is not the only place where locals have grown tired of visitors coming for photo ops. The tiny Alpine settlement of Hallstatt in north Austria has become a huge destination on the tourist map in recent years, as it is widely believed to have been the inspiration for the kingdom of Arendelle in Frozen.
The much-photographed spire of the lakeside Pfarrkirche has also appeared on computer screensavers as well as in South Korean TV dramas and more than a million Instagram posts, making it one of the best known places in the country.
It seems that not all publicity is good publicity however, at least in the minds of some of the 700 or so people who live in Hallstatt. Every day tens of thousands of visitors arrive in the village to check out the famous view, which causes chaos in the small settlement.
Earlier this month around a sixth of the village's population turned out to block the main access tunnel in a protest against over-tourism to the area. Protest organisers Bürgerliste Hallstatt claim that those living there are “regularly insulted and threatened by illegal parkers” and that traffic is clogging access through the town. Residents of the village claim that they are outnumbered by annual tourists 1,800 to one.