Even though a team of researchers from Jackpot City Casino, an online free-play social gambling site, has deemed Hoover Dam the fourth-most overrated tourist attraction in the country, 7 million people visit the 726-foot engineering marvel on the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona border each year.
Judgments and rankings were made based on the number of negative keywords found in TripAdvisor visitor reviews. Researchers said 6.84 percent of the reviews had negative words and phrases like “overrated,” “overpriced,” “boring,” “avoid,” “disappointing,” “expensive,” “underwhelming,” “tourist trap” and “stressful” in them.
The people at Hoover Dam probably shouldn’t be too worried about the ranking — the same researchers said the esteemed Smithsonian Museums in Washington were the nation’s most overrated attraction.
Hoover Dam visitation was in the news recently when a toll plaza gate was built just beyond the Hoover Dam security checkpoint, but Bureau of Reclamation officials said there are no plans to start charging admission to the dam.
