Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Liz Boni sits in a giant chair carved by a number of chain saw artists at the Appalachian Arts Center near Ridgway, Elk County. Ms. Boni is owner of the center. Click photo for larger image.

RIDGWAY, Pa. -- Dave Love tosses a couple of freshwater clamshells onto the cash register counter at Love's Canoe Rentals, the cluttered, unconsciously retro outdoors store where he rents boats and bikes and sells everything from ammo to camo to Sterno.

"These are coming back and the fishing is just great, too," said the spry, smiling 77-year-old, pointing over his shoulder toward a corkboard pinned with photos of lunker trout and the blue-green Clarion River that tumbles outside. "We just need to get people up here."

After decades of neglecting the tourism potential of 2.1 million acres of public land and surrounding towns in 12 primarily rural, naturally spectacular, northern tier counties, the state plans to spend almost $200 million dollars to promote it.

Branded Pennsylvania Wilds by state marketers, the project focuses on a swath of rolling woodlands that blankets the Allegheny Plateau and drapes in lush folds across the Appalachians. It's a landscape where the state's bulging elk herd, tallest trees, grandest canyon, wildest woodlands and darkest skies can be found.

It's also a sparsely populated area where the political landscape is decidedly conservative, historically short on cooperation between the counties and long on distrust for any government not populated by neighbors. And a cyclical economy defined by natural resource extraction -- logging, wood products production, oil and natural gas drilling and mining -- has helped foster an underlying tension between development interests and conservationists.

Against that green state-red state backdrop, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, until the past few years, has been like a hiker on a narrow, unmarked trail, anxious to move ahead but daunted by the danger and difficulty.

"Public lands so dominate the landscape up here, but we've done nothing cohesive with our parks and forests to promote the value we bring until now," DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis said here last month when he waded in to announce $1.78 million in funding for 33 projects, including regional planning, trails, swimming pools, wood products development and municipal parks.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Dave Love at his business, Love's Canoe Rental and Sales in Ridgway. State DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis was recently in Ridgway to announce grants for planning and forest development projects. Click photo for larger image.

State funding for projects finished or under construction totals about $55 million. Additional projects scheduled for the next three years will cost $140 million more. Much of the spending is aimed at improving the infrastructure -- roads, sewers, water supplies, camping and lodging -- on public lands and at enhancing eco-tourism business opportunities.

"This is about outdoor recreation and promoting and marketing the public lands to get people to come, but it's more than that," Mr. DiBerardinis said. "If we don't also pay attention to and invest in the parking, land use, emergency services and infrastructure, this effort on the visitor side is going to fail."

Taught by mistakes

That lesson was learned the hard way over the past decade when the state failed to foresee and plan for the throngs of tourists that descend on Elk and Cameron counties during the fall "rut" or mating season to view what has grown to be the largest elk herd in the Eastern United States. The tourists jammed roads, turfed yards with their cars and out of necessity used the outdoors for a restroom.

"We were very successful on the biological side in establishing the herd, but we were unaware of the implications, both positive and negative, of tourism," said Mike Krempasky, DCNR deputy director of policy and legislation, who began working on the problem five years ago.

He spent two years talking about tourism management with local government leaders and building community support for improving access to the region's charismatic mega-fauna. The result is a plan for the Elk Scenic Drive, a 127-mile arc through the state's elk range on existing roads where viewing areas, paved roadside auto pull-outs, parking areas, overlooks and restrooms will be installed.

June Sorg, Elk County commissioner who lives in the tiny town of Benezette in the heart of the elk range, said the state had worked hard to win people over and solve the problems caused by the influx of elk sightseers.

"It's been a bumpy road for some of the residents there because of the tourists," she said. "And we still have some issues with traffic, but what I've been hearing more lately is, 'It's so beautiful here. We need to share it.' "

The experience with elk tourism convinced state officials and some local leaders that much more could and should be done to attract and manage visitors to the 27 state parks and 1.5 million acres of state forests and game lands in Cameron, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk, Forest, Jefferson, Lycoming, McKean, Potter, Tioga, and Warren counties.

"If you look between New York City and Chicago, there's really nothing like Pennsylvania's 2 million acres," Mr. Krempasky said. "The Adirondacks in New York are similar in that it's a working forest with remote areas and is accessible to a lot of people. But we've got lots of attractions."

The DCNR released a recreation plan a couple of weeks ago for the Pennsylvania Wilds region that inventories and assesses recreational assets and natural features on public lands, and makes recommendations for staffing and infrastructure investments. It recommends establishing "signature recreation sites" for sightseeing, hiking, wildlife viewing, water sports, biking and star-gazing at Cherry Springs State Park in Potter County.

Other signature sites are the elk herd's scenic drive, the 513,000-acre Allegheny National Forest, Cook Forest State Park's old growth beeches and hemlocks, the federally designated wild and scenic Clarion River and the Pine Creek Gorge, also known as Pennsylvania's Grand Canyon. A planned visitor information center and nature lodge at S.B. Elliott State Park near Interstate 80 in Clearfield County will serve as a gateway to the region. The park is at the eastern end of the Elk Scenic Drive.

Such wide-ranging, coordinated programming in an area where planning is often limited to setting up canoe trip shuttles has not been an easy sell. Some environmentalists have opposed the effort because the state's marketing emphasizes tourism and recreation without first establishing development guidelines and a comprehensive strategy to ensure preservation of fragile forest, trail and water resources.

Collaborating at last

In April, the 12 counties agreed to participate in an intergovernmental planning council.

"This is the first time this region has done any collaborative planning," said Meredith Hill, DCNR greenways and land use coordinator and a member of the Pennsylvania Wilds planning team. "The state recognizes that it's not our place to make local land use plans, but we can make a lot of resources and technical assistance available.

"It's a state priority to upgrade our facilities and invest in the area. We want to maximize our investment and how that occurs, but we don't want to change the small-town lifestyle."

Don Masisak, deputy director of the six-county North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission, said some county governments were slow to embrace the regional approach pushed by the state. Elk, Lycoming and Clinton counties especially, where land demands for agriculture, housing developments and industrial parks is sometimes seen as competing with tourism and environmental interests.

"There was some concern, but the state's approach has been working. It's throwing out a plan, but getting local input," he said. "They've made it dynamic, and local people are driving it. Businesses want to be identified with Pennsylvania Wilds."

Ridgway, Elk County, with the elk herd to the east, the state's only national forest to the west and the Clarion River at the doorstep of its historic timber baron mansions, is in the middle of it all.

The town had a depressed economy, vacant storefronts and an old, dilapidated housing stock 10 years ago when civic groups started working together to turn the town around. Now, with $90,000 in loans from the state Main Street Program, its storefronts are painted and full. More than 30 of the timber baron mansions dating to the mid-1800s have been restored and the Chainsaw Carvers Rendezvous attracts 30,000 tourists a year on the last weekend of February.

"We started out of sheer desperation, and were working at it five years before the state even thought about this region," said Dale Lauricella, a New Jersey native who moved to Ridgway in 1994 and is president of the Downtown Economic Development organization and a member of the DCNR Citizens Advisory Council.

The early local community planning and restoration efforts put the town in good position to take advantage of state programs, and could be a model for other small towns in the region, she said. The next project for Ridgway is to preserve and improve public access to the Clarion River and enhance business opportunities related to river recreation. The state has provided a study grant.

"River development could be the crown jewel for Ridgway, especially if we can get more lodging, restaurants and entertainment," said Ms. Lauricella, who spent three years renovating the 141-year-old Victorian Towers mansion on South Street, her bed-and-breakfast.

Making the link between state funding and private business investment will be key to the success of Pennsylvania Wilds, but only if development is done in a sustainable way that respects the natural attractions of the region.

"Right now, marketing is ahead of resource protections, but it's a balance issue," Ms. Lauricella said. "Business says it wants the state to move faster, but others have concerns about protecting our resources. People will come as long as we have attractions, so we need to better manage those properties they come to see and use."

Liz Boni, who, with her husband, Rick, took advantage of a state low-interest loan to open the Appalachian Arts Studio on Route 219 south of town last year, hopes they come.

"We're still at the front end of a long process," Ms. Boni said, as her daughter, Zoe, chain saw in hand, sent pine chips flying from a tree trunk in the process of turning it into a bear.

"Marketing is treading a fine line because it doesn't want to overwhelm the area, but we're still like a gold mine without a map. They still have to make it easier for people to find their way around. But that will come."