- Rural Utah towns like Vernal are leveraging outdoor recreation to boost economies.
- Uintah County developed facilities like a via ferrata to attract tourists.
- Outdoor recreation added $1.3 trillion to the 2024 GDP, surpassing agriculture.
SALT LAKE CITY — When Amber Toler was an accounting student at Utah State University Eastern in Price, 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 to 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 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.
