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[A] popular Vermont swimming hole in Warren is now up for a national award. But some who see Warren Falls as a beloved secret aren’t thrilled about the glut of tourists that the honor might attract on hot summer days.
USA Today and their online travel and lifestyle website 10Best announced that Warren Falls was a nominee among 20 national spots for the reader-selected title “Best Swimming Hole” on June 23. As of Tuesday, it was ranking at #3. (The rules of the contest allow users to cast a new vote every day until Monday, July 20.)
Warren Falls, located on Route 100 just south of the town, has long been famous, as swimming holes go, to locals. But it’s also been sought out by vacationers over the years: Yankee Magazine named it one of the 10 Best Swimming Holes in New England while TripAdvisor, one of the highest-traffic websites in the U.S., voted Warren Falls as the #2 destination in the tourist-friendly town, trumped only by Sugarbush Ski Resort.
The Warren swimming hole is so popular the federal government recently expanded the parking lot expansion to accommodate the persistent car overflow on the roadsides.
With various-height boulders and up to 20-foot plunges into ice-blue pools as deep as 15 feet, there’s no question that the falls are a bit of Vermont heaven on a sweltering afternoon. And responses on a Facebook post about the nomination by the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce show a passionate fan base in favor of the falls winning the award. The post, shared on June 28, had 70 shares, and 446 “Likes” on the social site.
Warren Falls has been nominated as one of the “Best” in the U.S.Vote daily until 7/20!
Posted by Mad River Valley on Sunday, June 28, 2015
Naysayers on the Facebook thread emerged. A third of the 26 Facebook commenters don’t want to see the waterfall to become more popular than it already is.
“I’m not voting. I like it as a best kept secret,” wrote Linda Collins.
Falls fan and landscape architect Ben Falk said the swimming hole is already dismayed by the recent expansion of the parking lot and doesn’t want to see more development at the site. The U.S. Forest Service bulldozed conserved lands to build a 12,000 square-foot extension of the original 13-car parking lot.
“I don’t think it’s a viable solution to bulldoze forest to have a place where people go to enjoy a swimming hole. All it does is attract more people to the place, which isn’t really a service to the place,” he said in an interview. “It was just a place on the river that was awesome…a piece of the earth that people could enjoy without constructed elements.”
A spokeswoman for the Chamber of Commerce said the idea that the site was hidden to outsiders was more myth than reality.
“While we have secret swimming spots here in the Valley, this national media attention is a reminder that, for better or worse, Warren Falls is not one of them,” said Lisa Davis, marketing director at the organization, in a statement.
The waterfall was an attraction for visitors “and visitors equal customers. Those customers support the livelihoods of many Valley residents,” she said.
Scoping documents from the Forest Service identified the Falls in 2012 as a “heavily used observation site” and due to “associated safety concerns of over-crowding the parking lot, the Forest Service has discouraged publicizing Warren Falls in tourist information and brochures,” a document said. The service had recorded as many as 70 cars “overflowing from the parking lot and parked along the highway shoulder and in pull-off areas within close proximity to the site.”
None of the U.S. Forest Service personnel who worked on that project were available for comment on the new lot, or whether or not the expansion had led to lifting the publicity ban or the nod from USA Today. (Outgoing voicemail recordings said they were working in New York this week.)
As to whether or not the national acclaim will cause a rush of new sightseers and cliff jumpers, the Vermont River Conservancy has no doubt of it.
“Absolutely,” said Steve Libby, the land conservation group’s executive director. “When we do swimming hole conservation projects we’re very interested in what would be the appropriate level of use for a particular place.”
In a general example, he pointed out how at a small, low-profile site “we might encourage there not to be a giant parking lot built near the swimming hole,” he said, adding that the aim is to “manage the use without restricting the use.”
The Vermont River Conservancy helped to protect Warren Falls, but is no longer affiliated with the site. Libby said while the Forest “Service thought it was appropriate and necessary” to expand the parking lot, he knows many places where a 20-car lot would be overkill.
“Our hope is that we can conserve more and more places so that people have more options of where to go,” he said.
A town official said she was surprised that there was any negative feedback on better accessibility to the swimming hole.
Ruth Robbins, the planning assistant for Warren, said local leaders weren’t involved with the lot, but are glad it’s there – and that the site was nationally recognized.
“Having that parking lot is safer and better than what was there before – which was nothing,” she said. “There’s actually (still) not enough parking, but there probably aren’t any more people there with the parking lot, than there was without the parking lot.”
Robbins said the national recognition of the falls is appropriate.
“It’s one of those things Vermonters should be proud of and not keep hidden. If you’re going to try and keep it hidden, people are going to find it anyway and it will just be more dangerous,” she said.
