More Than Miles

It turns out all those miles in the woods aren’t just changing people—they’re changing entire communities.

Not that long ago, maybe 10 years, give or take, if you tried to talk to a room full of economic development folks about hiking or trail running, you’d get a polite nod.

Maybe a “that’s nice,” or "I don't like to drive that far."

And then the conversation would move back to industrial parks, highways, and whatever the next big recruitment deal was supposed to be.

Outdoor recreation just… wasn’t part of the toolkit.

It wasn’t that people didn’t care about it. It just wasn’t taken seriously as something that could move the needle for a community.

Now? It’s a completely different conversation. And if you’ve been around trails long enough, you’ve watched that shift happen in real time.

Before getting too far into the economics of it, it’s worth stepping back for a second and just asking a simple question:

What is outdoor recreation, really?

Because it’s easy to reduce it down to activities—running, hiking, fishing, biking. But that’s not quite it. I’ve heard it put this way, and it stuck with me: there’s more to fishing than catching fish. (thanks, Nathan Reiger - Director of PA Office of Outdoor Recreation!)

Same goes for all of this. People don’t drive two hours, wake up at 4am, or grind their way up a rocky climb just for the activity itself. They’re chasing something else. Connection. Escape. Challenge. A break from whatever else is going on in their life. Or sometimes, a way to deal with it.

You see it at races. You see it out on the trail. People are out there for reasons they don’t always say out loud. And in the process, they get something back -- better health, sure. But also a sense of purpose. Belonging. A feeling that they’re part of something, even if it’s informal and a little hard to define. That matters more than we probably give it credit for.

But here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough: All of this: the trails, the people, the experiences... it’s not just a collection of individual moments. It’s a system.

You’ve got the land itself: The state parks, forests, waterways. You’ve got the infrastructure: The trails, access points, campgrounds. You’ve got the people doing the work: volunteers, nonprofits, agencies. And then you’ve got the businesses orbiting around it: gear shops, outfitters, race companies, breweries, hotels, restaurants.

And of course, the users: the runners, hikers, anglers, bikers... the ones actually showing up and giving it life.

All of it connected. All of it influencing each other. Sometimes in good ways. Sometimes in ways we’re still figuring out.

And here’s another thing that’s easy to overlook:

Outdoor recreation isn’t separate from “real life.”

It’s not just something we do when everything else is taken care of. It is part of how people live.

People bike to work. They walk instead of drive. They hunt, they fish. They build routines around being outside, not as an escape, but as part of their daily rhythm.

That line between recreation and life is a lot blurrier than it used to be.

So how does all of this translate into economic development? There are really two ways to think about it. The first is the obvious one: the outdoor recreation economy itself.

This is the gear, the races, the trips, the experiences. It’s the companies designing and selling equipment. The outfitters and guides. The race organizers. The camps and lodges. The planners, marketers, and yes, even the people writing permits and managing land.

And then all the spillover. The gas stations. The diners. The hotels. The breweries. The small-town main streets that get a little busier on race weekend. It adds up.

And in Pennsylvania, it’s adding up in a big way.

The outdoor recreation economy in the Commonwealth has grown to over $20 billion. It supports more than 177,000 jobs. In just the past year, it added thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in wages. That’s not a side conversation anymore. That’s real economic impact.

But the second piece is the one I think is more interesting, and honestly, more important long-term. That’s economic development through outdoor recreation.

This is about quality of life. Because at the end of the day, communities aren’t just competing for businesses anymore. They’re competing for people. And people, especially the kind of people communities say they want to attract and keep, care about where they live. They care about access to trails. To parks. To places where they can get outside and feel like themselves again.

If a town has that—if it has accessible, well-maintained, meaningful outdoor spaces, it becomes more than just a place on a map. It becomes somewhere people choose to be. And once people choose to be there, everything else starts to follow.

Pennsylvania has started to figure this out. There’s been real investment—through DCNR, through the Office of Outdoor Recreation, through local and regional efforts—to build and support this space.

You’re seeing it in trail development. In park improvements. In support for outdoor businesses. In coordinated efforts like the Outdoor Business Alliance of Pennsylvania, which pulled together people from across the state—business owners, nonprofits, planners, local officials—to actually think about this as a system.

I had a front-row seat to some of that work in my day job at Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development and what stood out wasn’t just the strategy. It was the realization that this thing we’ve all been doing: running races, building trails, showing up.. it actually matters in a bigger way.

And maybe that’s the point of all this.

For years, a lot of us were out there just doing it because we loved it. Marking courses. Clearing trails. Putting on races. Showing up on weekends and hoping people would come along for the ride. Turns out, that work didn’t just build events. It helped build communities. Economies. Identity. All from something that, on the surface, looks like people just… going outside and having a good time.

Which, to be fair, is still a big part of it. But it’s also a lot more than that. It always has been.