The Athens Conservancy

Tourism and Open Space Tourism is often touted as a great opportunity for local economic development. At first blush, this may seem to be a vacuous fad, equivalent to the discredited "cargo cult" of building industrial parks, hoping that they will come (but they seldom do). For some areas without adequate attractions for tourists, this may be so. Our area, however, has the potential properties that could be a strong tourism draw. Economic development through tourism is a realistic goal for the Athens area.

Just consider this: Ohio is a state of eleven million people. Some of them go to the beaches of Lake Erie and other Great Lakes, but that only goes so far. There's lots more scenery to see in our corner of Ohio. The unglaciated Allegheny Plateau, in which we're located, has the best scenery in Ohio and is the closest highly scenic area to millions. Obviously, the Athens area should be an obvious and regular tourist destination for a goodly chunk of those millions.

To attract tourists seeking scenery and wild recreation, some particular resources are absolutely necessary. These include places to stay, outfitting resources, informational resources -- and the open space land that makes it all possible.

It doesn't work very well to have little parks here and there. In order to draw the greatest benefit from tourism for an area such as ours, we need large, consolidated areas with good trails, campgrounds and other outdoor-oriented facilities. We have some of that but need more -- in a planned and guided milieu of action. We also need a program to protect unique natural features that tourists will want to experience.

The Athens Conservancy is working on putting together planning materials to help guide land protection that can support a great expansion of tourism potential. This planning is founded on the desire to protect our environment in an effective way, but recognizes that economic development is essential to offset the setting aside of land. Both land preservation and appropriate economic development can occur hand-in-hand if the people of the area have the will to make it happen.

We already have businesses in the area that are seeking to do just that, but we can use more. We also need a coordinated effort to network between and promote these opportunities. One such effort, complementing that of the Athens Conservancy, is the Ohio Outback concept, being promulgated by a Hocking College professor, __.

One important note of caution is how the economic development occurs. We're already experiencing an ugly and hideous proliferation of billboards along our local highways. These are inimical to the kind of tourism that we need to develop. People aren't going to choose our area over others because we become another Gatlinburg. They're going to come here because we're as close to pristine as they can find close to home.