National Trails Day highlights nature's economic impact on Burke

Visitors spent more than $154 million in Burke County in 2024, and local tourism officials and trail advocates say outdoor recreation is one of the leading factors.

For “Nature’s Playground,” National Trails Day on June 6 highlights Burke County’s two state parks, multiple trails, and numerous connections to the Catawba River that might draw hikers, bikers, and paddlers from across Western North Carolina and the Charlotte metropolitan area.

With the Burke River Trail’s development expected to lay another 4 miles by the end of the year, Executive Director of the Burke River Trail Association Beth Heile looked forward to increased business opportunities.

“It’s brought new life into those towns (it will run through) and new excitement where you may have lost your textile mills or your furniture mills,” Heile said. “This is a new way to rebrand the communities in Burke County. That’s what people are looking for today. Not always ‘Where do I want to work?’ but first, ‘Where do I want to live?’”

She said studies show an increase in tax value when a property is near outdoor recreation sites. The locals are often the first to benefit from trails in the county.

“The beauty of Burke County having over 300 miles of trails is that you can come here for the weekend,” Heile said, pointing to metrics from Made by Mountains, an organization focused on the expansion of outdoor recreation.

According to Made by Mountains, 29% of visitors visited Burke for the day hiking, with 44% of total visitors coming for South Mountain State Park.

Shane Prisby, the trail program director at Foothills Conservancy, said, “People in our region come to experience new trails. They’re coming here to recreate because we have the land, the space, and the infrastructure. They leave their dollars in different ways.”

Prisby, who’s worked in trail development for 16 years after graduating with an economics degree, said “recreation infrastructure overlaps with business development within the state.”

“CEOs of mid-sized businesses want a place to set up their business where their employees want to live, and recreation is a huge part of that,” Prisby said. “Not everybody wants to spend their whole life, or invest themselves or their family or a business in an urbanized area. A lot of people want to live in a place that looks like Burke County.”

Katherine Christie, the director of sales and marketing for Burke County Tourism Development Authority, listed several businesses capitalizing on the trailways in Burke, including Town Tavern and Overmountain Cycles, which are both geared toward Morganton Greenway visitors.

Christie said, “For every $1 that goes into trails, $1.72 comes back into the communities.”

She explained visitor numbers rebounded after Hurricane Helene, with areas like Linville Gorge and South Mountains State Park sitting at the top of the tourist checklist.

“It’s so unique,” Christie said. “There isn’t another Linville Gorge anywhere else.”

While the state parks often get showered with love from the locals and tourists alike, Heile pointed back to the 2018 development of Valdese Lakeside Park as evidence of business investment in outdoor recreation.

“We needed $1.3 million to buy that land,” Heile said. “Kellex Seating, which is a furniture manufacturer in Valdese, gave $100,000 before the park even existed to help purchase the land, because they’re competing for employees. … They wanted to be able to bring people here that may have New York City or Boulder, Colo., to choose from.”

“They saw the benefit of having a big outdoor playground to attract more employees,” she said. “That’s really showing, somebody that wants to put $100,000 into what they hope something can be, shows that businesses, manufacturers, they get it and they want it.”