Sixteen states open offices to help rural areas cash in on outdoor recreation; most are in West; East targeted

State Offices of Outdoor Recreation map; click the image to enlarge it.

Some states are trying to help spur rural economic growth by opening outdoor-recreation offices that promote activities like hiking, mountain biking and more. Sixteen states have opened such offices, many of them signatories to the Confluence Accords, a bipartisan effort that seeks to increase conservation to help grow the economy, Bryce Oates reports for The Daily Yonder.

Outdoor recreation can be a big help to rural economies. Rural counties whose economies depended on recreation recovered from the Great Recession more quickly than other rural counties' economies, according to a Headwaters Economics study. Rural recreation counties also slightly gained population through migration while most other rural counties lost population the same way, and saw slightly higher incomes, the study said.

And, the outdoor recreation sector grew faster than the overall economy, according to the most recent figures from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. In 2017, the outdoor recreation sector grew by 3.9 percent, faster than the overall U.S. economy's 2.4% growth, Oates reports.