From Orick to Garberville: A New Vision for California’s Outdoor Economy (Guest Column)

[Photo provided by Samantha Montoya Wilson]

 It’s noon on June 3rd, and Dr. Geneviève Marchand is a few hours away from watching something she’s been building since last fall finally come to life. The Cal Poly Humboldt professor and co-organizer of the inaugural California Outdoor Economy Summit is calm, grounded, and — if you listen closely — quietly fired up.

“Why not now?” she says, when asked what took California so long to convene this kind of gathering. “We know it’s something that’s growing. We know that people want more outdoor recreation. They want more access to trails.”

It’s a fair question. According to Dr. Marchand — who noted in our interview that the figure has since been updated — California’s outdoor economy now generates $87 billion annually, surpassing the $81.5 billion cited in official summit materials. The state supports more than 545,000 jobs statewide. Yet 24 other states, soon to be 25, already have dedicated outdoor recreation offices. California doesn’t. Marchand has been watching those states grow their outdoor economies and asking herself why her home state, with all its staggering natural assets, hasn’t done the same.

The summit, co-organized with Calder Johnson of Redwood Region RISE and hosted in partnership with Humboldt County’s Economic Development Division, is her answer to that question. Three days of panels, roundtables, kayaking, film screenings, and — crucially — relationship-building between people who don’t always find themselves in the same room.

Day 2 opened with an optional waterfront wellness session led by Dr. Erika Torres on the back porch of the Adorni Center. By 9 a.m., Dr. Eric Riggs, Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt, and Humboldt County Economic Development Director Peggy Murphy had joined Marchand and Johnson at the welcome podium — a small but telling signal of how many institutional threads this summit is trying to weave together.

As someone who lives in Southern Humboldt, in a region that knows what it means to sit at the edge of something extraordinary and underleveraged, I find Marchand’s vision both familiar and galvanizing. She talks about Orick — “that’s my baby,” she says with a laugh — a small town just outside Redwood National Park that she sees as a model for what a sustainable outdoor recreation gateway community could look like, if the county and state give it the love it deserves. She talks about Garberville as another example of a rural community with real potential to develop a thriving outdoor recreation economy. She talks about the way conservation, restoration, and recreation form a triangle, with local businesses at the center.

But she’s careful, too — and this is where I think Marchand stands apart from your typical economic development boosterism. She’s seen what happens when outdoor recreation economies develop without putting community first. Moab. Tahoe. Mammoth. Summit County, Colorado, where, as she puts it, “it’s a recreation mecca, but employees can’t afford to live there.” She heard it again this very morning from Grant Roden of Redwood Adventures, who spoke on a summit panel about his inability to find housing for seasonal employees in Orick.

“I really advocate for outdoor access for the community first,” she says, “and then the rest comes in after.”

It’s a philosophy I hear echoed — with striking consistency — throughout the summit. And perhaps nowhere more pointedly than in my conversation with Gloria Sandoval, Deputy Secretary for Outdoors for All at the California Natural Resources Agency, who delivered the summit’s Day 2 opening keynote.

Sandoval oversees the state’s Outdoors for All initiative, and she’s direct about what it means: equitable outdoor access for every Californian, regardless of zip code. For those of us in Southern Humboldt, where community-built trail systems are already drawing visitors but perpetually scraping for infrastructure dollars, that’s not just a nice talking point. It’s a lifeline.

“No matter if you live in an urban city or up here in northern California,” Sandoval tells me, “we really want to prioritize those communities that have had less opportunity to receive funds to expand outdoor access.” She’s talking about places like the Southern Humboldt Community Park, where volunteer trail stewards have built something remarkable on grit and goodwill — multiuse trails open to hikers, mountain bikers, equestrians, and dogs — but where the gap between what exists and what’s possible remains wide.

Following Sandoval’s keynote, the morning shifted into a panel on the state of outdoor recreation and state government, featuring Lexie Gritlefeld of the California Outdoor Recreation Partnership and Elisabeth Swanson Johnson of Nevada’s Division of Outdoor Recreation — one of those 24 states that already has a dedicated office. The contrast wasn’t lost on anyone in the room. What Nevada has built, in terms of coordinated strategy and dedicated investment infrastructure, is exactly what California is still working toward. Hearing Johnson describe it directly gave the California contingent something concrete to aim for.

The investment conversation continued through the late morning, with a panel exploring how capital and partnership can build outdoor recreation ecosystems and incubate new businesses. Katie Doherty of Founded Outdoors facilitated, alongside Wil Franklin of the North Coast SBDC, Gary Bracelin of Bend Outdoor Worx, and Jason Young of the Siskiyou Accelerator. For rural regions like ours, where the assets exist but the business infrastructure often doesn’t, this kind of nuts-and-bolts conversation about funding mechanisms and incubation models is exactly what’s needed.

The cross-sector mix of this summit — tribal nations, conservationists, workforce developers, rural business owners, state parks, land trusts, educators — was no accident. Marchand is emphatic that tribal partnerships are not an afterthought here. “You cannot talk about the outdoors without talking about the people that have been here since time immemorial,” she says. “It needs to be the first thought.” That conviction shaped one of Day 2’s most substantive sessions: a deep-dive on Tribal Stewardship, Restorative Justice, and Co-Governance, facilitated by Dr. Riggs and featuring speakers from the Yurok Tribe — Tania Estrada and Alisia Sanchez — alongside Dylan Aubrey of the Tribal Workforce Trade Association, Nikcole Whipple of The Noyo Bida Truth Project, and Kelly Nathane of the Hoopa Valley Swim Team. The breadth of work represented — from the ‘O Rew Redwoods Gateway to the Noyo Bida Truth Project to tribal aquatics programs — made the case that Indigenous-led stewardship isn’t a niche conversation. It’s foundational to any serious vision of California’s outdoor future.

The afternoon also made room for something not enough outdoor economy conversations acknowledge: the arts. A session on the intersection of recreation and the arts brought together Anne Bown-Crawford of Arts in California Parks and Leslie Castellano of the Ink People Center for the Arts in Eureka, exploring how outdoor arts installations, interpretive projects, and festivals weave into the broader tourism and workforce ecosystem. As someone who has watched Southern Humboldt’s creative community go largely unrecognized in regional economic development conversations, seeing it framed as an asset — not an afterthought — felt significant.

Then came lunch, courtesy of the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association and Ramone’s, paired with a screening of Building Together and a Q&A with RCMBA Chair Gina Bauer, RCMBA Co-chair and Revolution Bicycle CFO Sean Tetrault, and Chad Kroeker of Green Diamond Resource Co. For anyone still skeptical that mountain biking belongs in the same sentence as economic development strategy, the film made a compelling case without trying very hard. Trails bring people. People spend money. Money, done right, stays local.

The afternoon session on gravel cycling and destination stewardship — led by Juan Dela Roca of Gravel Field Guide and Aviva North of the Coraggio Group — pushed that argument further, exploring how communities can use underutilized routes and off-peak seasons to build year-round outdoor recreation economies. The session drew on case studies from California and destinations nationwide, making the case that gravel tourism isn’t a niche pursuit — it’s a practical tool for activating underutilized assets and attracting diverse visitors while embedding stewardship into the development approach from the start.

It’s exactly the kind of thinking Gloria Sandoval is hoping to see more of across the state. Any project seeking state grant funding, she says, needs to be built on genuine community input. “We want to make sure that those projects reflect the needs, the desires, the ideas of the community.” That’s not just good politics — it’s what makes a proposal competitive. Community-rooted projects, she says, are stronger proposals, full stop.

Which brings me to something I’ve thought about for years living down here: the grant process itself. Anyone who has worked in rural nonprofit or community development knows the particular exhaustion of spending weeks on a state application only to find out you weren’t eligible to begin with. Sandoval acknowledges it plainly. “There’s a recognition that the state is not always easy to work with.” But she describes real structural changes underway — shorter preliminary applications to determine eligibility before organizations invest significant time, streamlined reporting requirements, and perhaps most importantly, free technical assistance for smaller communities that can’t afford to hire grant consultants. Groups like the Redwood Coast Mountain Bike Association, working to expand the trail network at McKay Community Forest, are exactly the kind of volunteer-driven organizations that have historically fallen through the cracks of a process designed for entities with dedicated grant writers on staff.

“We want to make sure that those communities that, in the past, didn’t even know what the grant process was — because it was intimidating — feel more welcome applying,” Sandoval says.

And when it comes to making the economic case for trail investment in places like Garberville or the SHCP to state decision makers, Sandoval doesn’t hesitate. Outdoor access, she says, is not a recreation amenity. It’s a public health strategy, an economic development tool, and ultimately — a birthright. “Connections to the outdoors shouldn’t be treated as a luxury. It’s a necessity.” She cites data showing that even thirty minutes of outdoor walking per week produces measurable reductions in high blood pressure and diabetes rates. Healthier communities, she notes, cost the state less in the long run. The math isn’t complicated.

Day 2 ended on the water. Summit attendees spread out across Humboldt Bay by kayak and stand-up paddleboard, or joined an interpretive walk along the waterfront, while others took in the Sequoia Zoo Sky Walk. Then, at 7 p.m., the group reconvened at the Eureka Theater for a screening of First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath, followed by a conversation with Páah Áama Paddle Club founder Amada Lang and youth paddlers who made the historic 30-day source-to-sea journey on the Klamath River after the largest dam removal in U.S. history. This wasn’t a feel-good add-on to the summit program. It was, in many ways, its emotional core.

Day 3 opened with coffee, an optional waterfront wellness session again led by Dr. Torres, and the quiet sense that something had shifted over the previous 48 hours. Relationships had formed. Business cards had been exchanged. The energy in the room on the final morning was different from the first — more grounded, more connected, more ready to work.

Victor Bjelajac, District Superintendent of the North Coast Redwoods District for California State Parks, delivered the morning’s opening remarks — a reminder of just how much public land anchors everything being discussed, and how much the health of that land matters to the health of these communities.

The morning’s Business Roundtable cut straight to the practical realities facing the sector. Small businesses make up 90 percent of the outdoor recreation economy, and the panel — facilitated by Jason Young of Siskiyou Economic Development — didn’t shy away from the hard parts. Jennifer Johnson of Adventure’s Edge, Grant Roden of Redwood Adventures, and Mark Branagh of Kōkatat & Wing Inflatables brought the kind of candor you only get from people who are actually living this work. Roden’s earlier remarks about the housing crisis for seasonal employees in Orick had already set the tone; this session broadened that conversation to include the full range of pressures — workforce, infrastructure, seasonality, access to capital — that rural outdoor businesses navigate every day.

The agritourism session that followed offered a genuinely hopeful counterpoint. Cassandra Prenn-Vasilakis of Hipcamp facilitated a conversation with Alec Dompka and Rachael Callahan of UC ANR, and Portia Bramble of the Northcoast Growers Association, exploring farm tours, low-impact camping, and agritourism as both an economic lifeline for small farmers and a draw for visitors looking for something more rooted than a standard recreation experience. For Southern Humboldt, where agriculture and outdoor access have always coexisted — sometimes uneasily, sometimes beautifully — this framing resonated.

After a networking lunch where attendees self-sorted by topic — agritourism, gravel biking, trails and infrastructure, tribal stewardship, small business development, conservation and restoration, and more — the afternoon opened with an ice cream break courtesy of Foggy Bottoms & Jersey Scoop, presented by Thomas Nicholson Stratton. Not every breakthrough at a policy summit comes from a keynote — sometimes it comes from a well-timed scoop.

The Regional Recreation Projects panel that followed demonstrated just how much regional-scale collaboration is already underway across California, even without a statewide coordinating office. Justi Hansen and Renee Casterline of the Siskiyou Outdoor Recreation Alliance, Elaine Hogan of the Great Redwood Trail Agency, Billy Morrow of Coachella Valley Associated Governments, and Jesse Voremberg of Rails to Trails each brought examples of long-horizon projects requiring the kind of multi-jurisdictional patience and persistence that doesn’t make headlines but does make trails. The Great Redwood Trail alone — stretching nearly 300 miles through the North Coast — is exactly the kind of infrastructure investment that could reshape regional economies for generations, if the will and the funding hold.

The Conservation as an Economic Driver session, facilitated by Melodie Meyer of the Environmental Protection Information Center, made the ecological case with economic language. Jessica Matthews of the California Council of Land Trusts, Thomas Morales of the California Coastal Conservancy, and Carson Risner of Earth Economics laid out how land and water conservation aren’t a brake on economic development — they’re the foundation of it. Morales, who serves as a tribal liaison for the Coastal Conservancy, brought a thread of continuity back to the tribal stewardship conversations from Day 2, reinforcing that land conservation and Indigenous sovereignty are not separate issues.

The final substantive session of the summit focused on CA Jobs First — the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development program responsible for the state’s economic blueprint, including outdoor recreation as a priority sector. Calder Johnson of Redwood Region RISE and John Wentworth of the Mammoth Lakes Trails & Public Access Foundation walked through three years of sector-specific work and sketched out what comes next. For a summit that began by asking why California lacks a coordinated outdoor economy strategy, ending with a conversation about a state program actively building one felt less like a conclusion than a starting point.

Then came Assemblymember Chris Rogers of California’s 2nd Assembly District, who delivered the summit’s closing remarks. Rogers has emerged as a legislative champion for outdoor economic development, and his presence on the final afternoon was a meaningful close to three days of substantive work. When elected officials engage meaningfully with the substance of a three-day working summit rather than appearing solely for ceremonial purposes, it signals a level of commitment that the outdoor economy community has not always been able to count on from Sacramento.

Marchand would agree. Her vision for the outdoor economy isn’t a tourism brochure — it’s a framework for keeping rural communities intact and thriving on their own terms. Seasonal work doesn’t have to mean precarious work, she argues. A region that draws mountain bikers in summer can pivot to wellness tourism in winter. The key is intentionality — building the outdoor economy around the people already living there, not in spite of them.

“All of rural California can benefit from the outdoor economy,” she says. “But we’ve got to be careful not to push out the people who are living there.”

The summit’s formal programming gave way to Eureka’s Friday Night Market, where attendees spilled out into downtown — local makers, food vendors, live music, the whole convivial apparatus of a community that knows how to celebrate itself. It felt like the right ending. Not a ceremony, but a continuation.

As for what comes next — Marchand is already thinking about it. She hopes this summit signals to Sacramento that whoever takes office next year needs to take the outdoor economy seriously. She’s eyeing a return to Humboldt every other year. And she wants the relationships formed this week to keep running long after the last session wrapped.

“In the end, that’s what the summit is about,” she says. “People meeting, learning new things, forming amazing partnerships and collaboration. And then just running with it and making it happen.”

And from where I’m sitting — back home in Southern Humboldt, where the trails already exist and the potential has always been there — it feels like the state might finally be catching up to what we’ve known all along.

Read more from Samantha Montoya Wilson here.