Outdoor recreation driving population boom in rural areas
It’s a Monday evening, and Dan Mcallister is charging up a mountain in Lone Pine State Park under a canopy of Douglas fir.
He keeps his head down and his bike tires whizzing until he gets to the top, where he can see across the Flathead Valley in northwest Montana. To the north are the snowcapped vistas of Glacier National Park and to the south is the glimmering head of Flathead Lake, one of the largest natural freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi.
Mcallister, 33, moved here two years ago from Missouri so these could be his everyday views.
He’s not the only one. Every year, more people are moving to small towns tucked in the Flathead Valley so they can choose from a range of outdoor activities — camping, hiking, riding their bikes, kayaking, skiing — throughout the year. Flathead County first hit 100,000 residents last year, after growing by about 10 percent since 2010, according to U.S. census estimates. It’s the state’s second-fastest-growing county, after Gallatin County, home of Montana State University, and one of the fastestgrowing rural counties with populations over 25,000 in the United States.
While many rural counties have been shrinking for years, others with strong recreational industries, such as mountainous Western towns where people can take a quick hike or southern states with yearround golfing weather, have been growing rapidly. These populations are growing as it becomes easier to work from anywhere and as more people retire and move away from the city.
The trend is part of what drove the overall slight growth of the rural population in the United States from 2016 to 2017, for the first time since 2010, according to a Stateline analysis of census data. (Rural counties are those defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget as outside cities and their suburbs.) The population in rural counties grew by only about 33,000 during that time, to about 46 million. While counties with large mining and farming industries shrank, counties with large recreation industries grew the most, by about 42,000, to about 6.3 million.
This includes Flathead County, Mont., and other counties with or near mountains, such as Teton County, Idaho, near Grand Teton National Park, which have seen double-digit population growth; and Eagle County, home of ski towns Avon and Vail, which has grown 5 percent since 2010. Rural counties on the edges of suburbs, where land is cheaper and recreation is right out the back door, such as Wasatch and Summit counties in Utah, have seen double-digit growth.
Recreation is driving their economies. Outdoor recreation generates about $124.5 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue each year, according to a 2017 report by the Outdoor Industry Association. That’s up from about $79.6 billion in 2012. Western rural counties with more protected public land have higher income levels and faster economic growth, according to a 2012 study by Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research organization based in Bozeman, Mont.
Each summer, a few million people visit Glacier National Park, which is about 30 miles from the hub of Flathead County, Kalispell. With more visitors and residents, those who manage the public land — federal, state and local officials and volunteers — say it’s been challenging to ensure the upkeep of campgrounds, trails and other amenities, and to expand in a way that won’t harm the surroundings.
“We don’t want to love it to death,” said Janette Turk, a spokeswoman with Flathead National Forest.
Many people who live here say it still feels rural, and they like it that way. The county is about the same size in square miles as Connecticut, with about 3 percent as many people.
Kalispell houses nearly a quarter of the county’s residents, and its mile-long Main Street resembles that of a small town, with locally owned stores and diners.
Old friends gather in the mornings at Sykes, a historic diner and market in Kalispell’s downtown. One recent Tuesday, as the regulars started filing in around 9 a.m., a group of men filled a reserved table near the bar.
One of the men, Ray Thompson, said it’s easy to “get lost in the speed of things,” now that the town is growing. Thompson owns the restaurant and renovated it in 2010, but kept the original atmosphere and the 10-cent coffee. He thinks growth is good for the county, but, like many other residents, he has some worries.
There is a lack of affordable housing for renters and buyers, and housing is becoming more expensive, the mayor, Mark Johnson, said. The typical home value has gone up by 6 percent since 2009, to about $237,000, according to census data.