Storyboards is a photo printing business that helps people make unique wall art. To help travellers find the most “picturesque” landscapes in America, the company’s experts looked at Instagram hashtag data to figure out which landscapes could be called the most “picturesque.” Lake Tahoe, which is in the Sierra Mountains between California and Nevada, was found to be the best place.
“With 2,986,225 Instagram hashtags, Lake Tahoe is at the top of the list of the most beautiful places in America,” the results said. The team said that this very high number of mentions could be because of the lake’s very clear water and the “many outdoor activities” that visitors can do there, such as hikes, fishing, and lots of skiing in the winter.
One of North America’s five Great Lakes, Lake Michigan, came in second with 2,788,904 uses of its name on the social media site. The team said, “With a length of 307 miles and a width of 118 miles, Lake Michigan is the third largest lake in the United States and the fifth largest lake in the world. It also has a lot of natural habitats.” (Spoiler alert: Four of the five Great Lakes are on the list.)
Clearwater Beach in Florida comes in third. It is a beautiful sugar-sand beach with blue water that has been mentioned in 1,298,877 Instagram hashtags. With 1,157,663 hashtag comments, Lake Superior, which is also one of the five Great Lakes and the world’s biggest freshwater lake, came in at number four. The team thinks that, like Lake Tahoe, it’s “incredibly clear” water is what makes it so famous. And Lake Ontario rounds out the top five, with just over 1 million hashtags about it.
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Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Lake Norman in North Carolina, Lake Huron, which is also one of the five Great Lakes, and Lake Powell, which is in both Arizona and Utah, took sixth through ninth place.
There was, however, one place that wasn’t about water that made the list: the Mojave Desert, which was mentioned 429,066 times. The team said that the desert probably gets so much praise because it has a unique environment with “towering mesas, sand dunes, and Joshua Trees.”
“The fact that the top 10 landscapes are in different states, like Florida, Hawaii, and North Carolina, shows that Americans have a lot of beautiful places to choose from,” Gavin Glick, co-founder of Storyboards, said in a statement that Travel + Leisure got a hold of. “However, it’s interesting that seven of the top 10 landscapes are all lakes. This suggests that Americans like lakes more than any other type of landscape.”
