These rural towns are banking on outdoor recreation to boost their economies

When Amber Toler was an accounting student at Utah State University Eastern in Price, Utah, she also worked as a river guide and with Carbon County Recreation. She’d grown up camping with her family and loved getting outside, but those experiences showed her that someone could have an actual, full career in outdoor rec. It changed her trajectory.

“In the back of my head, it was always, ‘OK, well, accounting’s really the plan B. Eventually, I want to open a climbing gym somewhere,’” Toler said. “But I didn’t know where or how.”

After some time spent on the Wasatch Front, Toler and her husband moved to Vernal in 2015 thinking it a stepping stone to somewhere else. But living in a place adjacent to desert, rivers and mountains suited them and they fell in love with a more rural lifestyle. Vernal became home.

But, despite such beautiful surroundings, Uintah County is not necessarily known for its recreation opportunities.

Aside from being a gateway to Dinosaur National Monument, its economy is tied to the oil and gas industry as one of the largest producers in Utah. That also means that it navigates the boom-and-bust nature of natural resource extraction, which is at the whim of the alternating policies of presidential administrations.

Tourism, however, helps to stabilize the region during downturns, said Lesha Coltharp, the Uintah County tourism director. So, in addition to its established industries, the county has made a concerted effort over the past 10 years to develop outdoor recreation opportunities — it built a motocross track, created ample mountain biking and OHV trails, sponsors events and more — to address its primary industry’s ebb and flow.

It’s not just Vernal either, said Jason Curry, director of the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation. There are many places around the state — he mentioned Richfield in Sevier County, in particular — that are turning to outdoor recreation to “pick up the slack” left from an ever-changing extraction market and looking to develop durable economic futures based on their surrounding landscapes. ”All of those communities are turning to outdoor recreation," he said.

Toler embraced Vernal’s efforts. She advocated for climbing opportunities, started a nonprofit, met with state and local officials to try and develop more climbing routes and when — just three years ago — Vernal began the process of installing a via ferrata, she was eager to lend a hand.

A popular way to climb in Europe, via ferratas are protected climbing routes built into rock faces with iron ladders, steel cables and bridges. They allow folks without technical skill to safely rock climb. It’s an experience that some might say is head and shoulders above an indoor climbing gym.

Last fall, after a few years of planning and development, the country’s largest via ferrata — iron path in Italian — opened in Ashley Gorge, just north of Vernal, adding yet another reason to recreate in the Uintah Basin.

“The whole point of the climbing gym for me was to always get people outdoors climbing. That was the end goal ... because it had been such a light in my life,” Toler said. “So when (Vernal) announced they were going to build the via ferrata, we pivoted and I opened the guide service.”

Now Toler operates Dyno Outfitters, the guide and gear rental service for the via ferrata. Thanks to county and state investment in the outdoor recreation economy, she doesn’t have to dust off that old accounting degree after all.

As a result, she’s one of several new businesses operating around the state that are contributing to a broader economic future for themselves and future generations.

What’s the outdoor recreation economy?

As of the last national data dump, the outdoor recreation economy is massive and growing. As a whole, the industry added $1.3 trillion dollars to the 2024 gross domestic product and employed 5.2 million people.

When all forms of recreating are included — everything from camping, boating and RV-ing through hunting, fishing and off-road vehicles — the total national sector brings in more money than mineral mining; it’s worth more in dollars than agriculture. A closer economic competitor is oil and gas.

Despite those numbers, its significance is easy to overlook and it does not receive similar incentives as comparably scaled industries. Perhaps that’s because the economic sector has only been officially measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis since 2017, which was congressionally mandated by the passing of the Outdoor Recreation Jobs and Economic Impact Act in 2016.

Or it could also be because towns don’t really strike gold, per se, with a new climbing route or trailhead. Beaucoup dollars can develop, of course, near major attractions like national parks or ski resorts, but not every town in the West is so positioned.

Places like Vernal and Richfield may not be adjacent to Utah’s national parks, but their access is still world class and they happen to be, generally speaking, in one of the best states in the nation to recreate outside. According to Access Utah, a nonprofit that helped fund Vernal’s via ferrata, access to the outdoors is the primary reason people move to the state and the primary reason they stay.

As such, Utah’s certainly not overlooking the sector either. Outdoor recreation added $9.7 billion in value to the state’s economy in 2024 and at least 75,182 jobs, but its investment goes back further.

In 2021, the Utah Legislature created the Division of Outdoor Recreation to help develop, fund and facilitate new outdoor recreation opportunities. The division’s budget pulls 1% from state sales taxes and from the transient room tax, and winds up allocating $12 million in grants every year to municipalities looking to grow their own recreation economy.

“The state has been a funding partner to get these projects brought into reality as the local governments have envisioned them,” Curry said. “We have a planning arm and we have the mentality that we want to provide tools for local government — and for rural Utah especially — that will enable them to forge their path when it comes to outdoor recreation.”

Return on outdoors investment

Coltharp, who has been invested in Uintah Basin’s tourism her entire life, is thrilled with how much the outdoor recreation economy is doing for her town.

Her grandfather owned a concession shop at Dinosaur National Monument — the aptly named Dinosaur National Monument Information and Gift Shop — that’s been there for 54 years now. Coltharp began working behind the counter when she was 12.

She knows outdoor rec won’t supplant oil and gas, but she’s worked hard to make sure that it has a seat at the county’s table and isn’t a second- or third-tier idea about how to make it a more sustainable place to live.

In the last 11 years or so Uintah County has received $3.9 million in outdoor recreation grants from the state, which have then translated into more than $9 million in usable investments due to local matching efforts. The county is seeing that money come back to it as well.

Coltharp said that Vernal’s outdoor recreation economy has brought the town millions in tax dollars. Single high school mountain biking races, which has been a sport in Uintah’s public school system for about 10 years, bring in as much as $3 million to the community. Then there are all the other events like the Vernal Rock Rally and the Outlaw ATV Jam that come to town once a year.

“Whenever a tourist comes into your community, whether they’re staying in a hotel, buying gas, buying food, renting climbing gear, renting an ATV — whatever they’re doing — they’re spending outside money and putting that into your community,” she said. “So that’s an economic benefit.”

As those benefits roll in, she said it’s “crazy” what proper planning, cooperative development and some help from the state can generate for a small town.

“I think back before that office was brought in, it was every county trying to do little projects on their own or working with the federal government or with state parks, but not having a way to be able to get those bigger dollars to make these projects come to life,” Coltharp said. “It was such a smart move for them to start investing in outdoor recreation.”

Utah’s trails country

Richfield in Sevier County is a two-and-a-half hour drive south of Salt Lake City and about the same distance from Moab. The county has received $6.7 million from various state grants. With local matching, that has translated to $18.8 million the community has been able to direct toward outdoor recreation.

In that time, it has rebranded itself as “Trails Country,” and rightly so, with 37 new miles of mountain bike trails and over 600 OHV trails. Its mountain bike trail system is not as large as Moab’s, but with trails like Spinal Tap — 18 miles of downhill track going from Aspen groves to the desert with only 500 feet of uphill — it really is a destination.

Curry described what they do have as world class. “While the quantity isn’t there, there’s quality,” he said.

“That area is becoming and will continue to become a mountain biking destination,” Curry said. “Richfield, Utah — very strange to think about that 85 years ago."

Amy Myers, the director of tourism for Sevier County, said that local studies show that those investments are turning a not-too-small profit for the town. One study shows that those entities brought in $18 million last year.

That’s a single year and does not take into account other weekend events in Richfield, like the Rocky Mountain Jamboree, which can bring a million dollars alone. It also doesn’t account for the new businesses that are opening to service the new recreation.

Richfield has at least one new hotel opening, possibly more. There’s a new bike shop, fishing tour guides and a shuttle service to assist bikers riding the trails.

“You have to be pretty brave to open your own business and be an entrepreneur. So the hope is that we start really impacting those,” Myers said. “It makes my whole day to know that I impacted a neighbor, somebody who lives next to me.”

One such owner, Houston Holt, opened Ride Richfield, a shuttle service taking mountain bikers back up the mountains from the base of trails to where they parked at the top. A Richfield local, he’s said that the new outdoor recreation is an obvious win for the community.

“It was very easy to see very quickly how much benefit these trails could provide to the valley,” Holt said.

Holt is passionate about what this economy can do for his town, even if the business is not for now a huge moneymaker. Ride Richfield’s numbers doubled from the first year to the next and have steadily grown since.

But he’s still able to employ four part-time drivers, jobs for which hire only people who live nearby. That broader sense of keeping the tourism dollars in town is important to him and he makes sure to suggest his customers go to local restaurants and is proud that his is the only Richfield-based shuttle company.

There was, of course, some pushback when the trail systems were being developed and then built. Hunters, for example, who were worried it would have too much of an adverse effect on their grounds did not like it, Holt said. But in his conversations with other local business owners, most are happy for the growth they’ve seen in their businesses. Of course, his customers are thrilled with the trails they’ve traveled into town to ride.

“We have people coming from all over the world and everyone just goes crazy about Richfield,” Holt said. “So it’s definitely been a thing of pride. And it’s funny — I don’t think the locals here really understand how big of a deal Richfield is right now.”

Another Moab?

In both Sevier and Uintah counties, not everyone was thrilled with developing more outdoor recreation. Like the hunters in Richfield, there were ranchers in Vernal who were worried that via ferrata climbers would damage or affect the watershed. More than that though, it seems, folks are worried that their small community might become the next Moab.

“In rural communities, you find that half the town is excited about the recreation tourism and half the town is like, ‘No, don’t tell anybody that we exist because we want to keep it to ourselves,’” Toler said.

Toler was grateful that Vernal’s community leaders like Coltharp have consciously scaled up tourism in a sustainable way. Describing her interpretation of their mindset, she said they seemed to understand that it’s going to happen no matter what and that there are benefits associated with growth.

Coltharp said that the town has to be protective of its land, not just for the here and now, but also for younger generations.

“If you want to live here and you want your kids to come back here and live, then you’ve got to have a balanced economy,” Coltharp said. “Outdoor recreation and tourism are part of that balanced economy.”

Planning ahead

Like most other government operations, the outdoor recreation economy needs to start thinking long term, Curry said.

If the Utah Department of Transportation were asked about a particular highway, Curry said it would probably have a specific plan — depending on projections and forecasted growth — for widening or adding capacity.

“That’s that long-range planning. It might be years out from now, and that’s how we want to approach recreation as well,” Curry said. “We want to be able to help people in rural Utah forecast what trends are happening out there. And then give them the tools to forge the path for themselves and create what’s going to be best for their goals economically and for their quality of life.”

Coltharp, Myers, Holt and Toler all agreed on that last point: Arguably the best part of the outdoor recreation development is that it doesn’t benefit just tourists. It benefits anyone who’s willing to go try it out.

“This (via ferrata) is an economic draw for our area, but also we have this amazing playground in our backyard and everybody in Vernal should go check it out and know that it’s there and be able to go and use it anytime they want and feel empowered and capable of going out and using it,” Toler said. “That’s why we all live here, is because we love the outdoors. So this is one more way to experience the magic of the outdoors.”