[Editor's Note: This is the final article in a three-part series on the Outdoor Economics Conference held in Silver City Oct. 2-4, 2019.]

By Mary Alice Murphy

The last panel this author attended was Opportunities, Challenges and Benefits of Trails. The moderator was Amy Camp, Cycle Forward owner, and panelists included Teresa Martinez, Continental Divide Trail Coalition executive director; Julie Judkins, Appalachian Trail Conservancy director of education and outreach; Matt Nelson, Arizona Trail Association executive director; and Christy Tafoya, New Mexico State Parks director.

Camp:
The first question is: what is the benefit of trails to businesses?

Judkins:
Trails are transformational. The Appalachian Trail is going through this big transition. Veterans are walking off the war. They are connecting with their soul source, their community and their self. The benefit is the passion of volunteers. The greater ecological services are the connections of watershed, food sheds and viewsheds.

Nelson:
Trails are connective tissue. The best development way is to concentrate humans, so it preserves the landscape. Unfortunately, trails have not been built with this in mind. You have geology, biology, hydrology and ecology. It has to be well thought out in advance.

Martinez:
The idea is sharing stewardship and local volunteerism. Local advocates look at it from a personal point of view. There needs to be a larger conversation of stewardship.

Tafoya:
We have in New Mexico 24 state parks. Some of them have trail systems. Trails provide for us a sense of place; they provide unique experiences. True experience is what trails can bring out. City of Rocks, for instance. It is a great example of sense of place. Be sensitive to the resources. Consider a trail a resource and take care of it.

Camp:
There are a lot of different opportunities with trails. One specific opportunity is trail communities and guiding communities. The Trail Town concept was developed in 2007, as part of the first staff to the Great Allegheny Passage through rural post-industrial areas. An impact study showed the trail had an impact, but it was not necessarily beneficial. The Appalachian Trail took it on, with even a program in Canada. It's the idea of maximizing trails for the good of the community.

Judkins:
Over the past 100 years, we've been working in a cooperative way to build and preserve the Appalachian Trail. It gives the opportunity for volunteers to go out. The trail has 31 trail maintaining clubs, with multiple agency partners. About 2000, we had pretty well established the trail, with 95 percent protected and acquired. Are we done? We've looked at it to determine if it's sustainable. We have to manage the resources. Volunteer corps are older. The first was launched in Hot Spring, North Carolina. Bailey Springs is the start of the second part of the trails. The application process brought more partners to the table. A lot of promotional material was put out. Now there are about 50 Appalachian Trail communities, with organized stewardship opportunities. One of the most important is education. Volunteerism and stewardship are a learned thing. We have hundreds of new volunteers, working together.

Nelson:
The Arizona Trail Association is 25 years old. The vision was to continue a path from Mexico to Utah. Community and people are most important. A documentary was done by one solo hiker. Ninety percent of it was videoing people in tiny rural communities. It was an aha moment that communities are more important than the trail system to connect people. Community pieces are vital. In Arizona the trail was designed to avoid communities, but we've reached out to communities along the way. We are now engaging 20 rural communities, determining how one can tap into them. We are looking at international interaction in tiny towns. The physical trail has signage. Arizona is a gateway community. We work with the Arizona Department of Transportation, then work with businesses that provide to the trail users. We have navigational apps. We provide the names of businesses where the hikers can find what they need. We have also developed a map for individual towns.

Martinez:
The Continental Divide Trail Coalition is seven years old. We grew out of the CDT Alliance, which dissolved. We learned from a federal agency that the alliance was not interested in managing the trail. We grew the coalition in a grassroots way. We drew attention to the smaller communities along the 3,100-mile trail. Silver City has about 10,000 people. We don't have the usage that the Appalachian Trail does. We probably have 25 through hikers a year. We want to support the trail long-term, create awareness and provide for the hikers. In 2014, Silver City was named the first Gateway Community. We've learned a lot since then about the designation process. Communities come to us for the designation process, with their priorities. The CDT is often one small asset of lots of things to do. The Silver City gateway is to the Gila and Aldo Leopold wildernesses, but it also has art and culture. We are focusing on the broad spectrum for people wanting to experience the CDT. We work closely with the local community. We are working with New Mexico True in Cuba, New Mexico, which leads to Chaco. Each gateway community is unique. The rural American West is unique. We celebrate it as it is. People come to experience the trails, the people and the scenic landscapes. We create awareness. It's OK to be Cuba or Pie Town. We create capacity resources. The success of the gateway community went from the first in Silver City and now we have 15. In Silver City, they adopted the whole trail. We are elevating the core value program in each gateway community program.

Tafoya:
The state created Cerrillos Hill State Part 10 years ago, but the trails were developed many years ago. It's an archaeological site, managed by Santa Fe County. They were preserving the archaeological sites. They reached out to state parks. We came in because it was important to us. Cerrillos is a good example of how we worked on a plan on how best to protect the resources, coming up with the right education, and how to tell the story. We worked well with the community. As an agency, we listen to what the community is saying. We have built a great relationship with the community. The volunteer coordination here established a Friends group. We couldn't do it without the Friends groups, which are also great resources of funding, too. We have a concession relationship and have an equestrian concession. He's sensitive to other uses of the trail. We are well integrated with the community. We listen closely to what they say. A new business is coming in. On the Turquoise Trail, we will have a new visitor center. We are celebrating important milestones. Oct 12, we will celebrate Cerrillos Hill's 10th anniversary.

Camp:
Consider all of us as resources. Can you tell us about a community that embodies a trail town?

Judkins:
Hot Springs. How many times we have been to an elementary school on the Appalachian Trail, asked the students if they had heard about it and only three held up their hands. Now there is signage that runs through the town. Now everyone knows about the trail. Franklin is another town. They meet every month to talk about challenges and opportunities. It's the local flavor of a new brewery.

Nelson:
Kearney, Arizona. It has 1,100 people, with one hotel, one hardware store, one restaurant and one massage therapist. It's a few miles from the trail. But the local pizza parlor will deliver to the trailhead. There are not only new businesses, but we asked trail users what they needed. They asked for what they needed. They developed a telephone tree to take people from the trailhead to town and back, so they can do laundry. They get a left-over T-shirt while their laundry is going. It is inspiring the next generation of trail maintenance. They work with schools. Public lands need to be transformed. Consumers of public lands also need to be stewards.

Martinez:
Our organization really emerged in Silver City. They are always incubating ideas. Life a family, our next phase is connecting families. These are ways to connect in the long-term relationships and connect on a personal level. It's a big deal. Silver City recognizes the emotional relationship of trails and why.

Tafoya:
This is an incredible conference. Raton has so much potential for trails. We are working hard to gin up energy toward the effort. There are great opportunities at Elephant Butte, too. Think about your own trails.

Camp:
There are amazing communities that have realized culture shifts.

A woman in the audience:
What about the Rio Grande Trail? It's 500 miles from southwest New Mexico to Colorado. Can someone comment on the progress?

Tafoya:
There is still a lot of work we need to do, as well as a lot of outreach to do. We haven't moved forward much, although we are moving forward with a commission. It's a really exciting opportunity for us.

A participant:
On trail maintenance, we have a lot of partners. We can't do without them.

Martinez:
We did a survey on the CDT. 86 percent said protecting the CDT is important, and the voice of local communities is extremely important. Shared stewardship is so important. It's a win-win from shared stewardship.

A man:
How important are keystone communities?

Nelson:
Extremely. It's a collective effort, a monumental effort. The more people involved, the better. The more people who are involved, then forever, they are attached to that piece of trail.

[Editor's Note: This concludes the three-part series on the Outdoor Economics Conference 2019 in Silver City]