CUMBERLAND, Md. -- The screaming at the top of Wisp Mountain is the result of economic development in Garrett County, Md.

It's coming from rafters -- people who pay $50 a seat to ride 1,700 feet of rapids. They ride the rapids of a man-made river, then take a conveyor belt back to the top of the white-water course to do it again.

Garrett County is not relying on Garrett County for its economic well-being.

Instead, realizing that people ignore the artificial boundaries laid down between states and counties, five counties that just happen to sit inside different states -- Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- are working together for economic development. People who live and work in other areas now come to Garrett County to boat in Deep Creek Lake, to horseback ride, to ski at the Wisp resort and to raft those white-water rapids.

They are living without regard to borders.

It's the sort of behavior that the Power of 32, a regional planning initiative based in Pittsburgh and spread across 32 counties in four states that make up the headwaters of the Ohio River and are all part of Appalachia, has been trying to promote.

The idea is that by working together, the four fairly weak portions of each state can create their own power base and work as a region to attract industry and build regional infrastructure.

In Western Maryland, the prevailing sentiment is that the eastern part of the state, which includes Baltimore and Annapolis, doesn't give a second thought to the counties that are tucked behind West Virginia.

For instance, the Maryland "Flush Tax," a $2.50-a-month tax on sewer bills and $30 a year on septic tanks, was instituted in 2005 to help pay for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. It was assessed on the entire state, even though about half of Garrett County is on the other side of the Eastern Continental Divide, and hence is part of the Gulf of Mexico watershed. Garrett County residents balked at paying to clean a mess they didn't make, but that didn't stop the extra tax assessment.

At a recent meeting of the Cumberland, Md., Rotary Club, Albert Feldstein, a regional planner with the Maryland Department of Planning, spoke about the work that Western Maryland is doing with Western Pennsylvania.

"Geographically, culturally, historically, this area has a lot more in common with Western Pennsylvania," he said.

The Great Allegheny Passage, the series of trails that run from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., goes right along the edge of downtown Cumberland. When Maryland did not have the funds to finish part of the trail, Pennsylvania loaned its neighbor the money, Mr. Feldstein said.

Now trail councils from both states are working together to place a geodetic marker on the exact spot that the bike trail crosses the Mason-Dixon line.

"These partnerships don't stop at state lines," he said.

Five counties have been working together for the last decade through The Greater Cumberland Committee, a nonprofit planning organization that works toward economic development in three states. The counties are Somerset and Bedford in Pennsylvania, Garrett and Allegany in Maryland and Mineral in West Virginia.

With a population of 21,518, Cumberland is the largest city in that five-county region and an economic center that was the eastern terminus of the historic C&O Canal. It was also the original starting point of the National Road, the first federal highway that provided access between the canal and cities farther west, such as Uniontown; Wheeling, W.Va.; Columbus, Ohio; and Indianapolis.

Colleen Peterson, the executive director of The Greater Cumberland Committee, is at the center of the effort to foster cooperation among the five counties straddling the Eastern Continental Divide. The committee is a nonprofit economic development group with two employees.

Ms. Peterson points to the white-water course in McHenry, operated by Adventure Sports Center International, as an example of economic development in the area.

Garrett County realized years ago that the man-made Deep Creek Lake created for hydroelectric power was also a recreational asset. In 1989, the county hosted the World International Canoe Federation's World Canoe Slalom Championship on the Savage River for canoes and kayaks.

The Savage River, fed by the Savage Dam, cannot keep generating the type of white-water to consistently use for paddling sports, but the World Championships did leave a legacy.

Building on that history, Adventure Sports Center International formed as a nonprofit with Garrett County Community College's Adventure Sports Institute and raised money to construct an artificial white-water course on top of Wisp ski resort, where the resort's snow-making pond was located.

Standing on the edge of the course, the view is of the mountains of Maryland and West Virginia. Riding the rapids, of the course, the last thing you pay attention to is the scenery.

The course is a big loop from one pond to another. Water is pumped from the lower to the upper pond by four pumps, each powerful enough to move 250,000 gallons of water a minute or fill an Olympic swimming pool in 10 minutes. The two ponds are also connected by a conveyor belt that carries the rafts, with the rafters still in them, from the bottom of the course back up to the start.

Matt Taylor, the executive director of Adventure Sports Center International and a former member of the U.S. Olympic Rafting Team, said the course was the rafting equivalent of a ski slope with a ski lift. It is one of just two artificial white-water courses in the Western Hemisphere, and the water can be adjusted based on the skills of the people using it: more water for the world championships, less for a field trip of teenage campers.

The planning for the $24 million white-water course, which can accommodate 200 people in rafts at a time with a couple dozen kayaks, came after Garrett County began booming following the 1991 completion of Interstate 68, which connected Interstate 70 in Hancock, Md., to Interstate 79 in Morgantown, W.Va.

The Adventure Sports Center also includes the 550-acre Fork Run recreational area that has hiking and biking trails and areas for rock climbing.

Garrett County Community College uses all of it as a laboratory and teaching facility for its associate degree in Adventure Sports Management, which includes courses in backcountry living, rescue skills, natural history and guiding and instructing adventure sports.

"There are really good minds trying to articulate a vision of how the area can accommodate even more visitors without ruining it," Mr. Taylor said.

"This is a model of a public/private partnership in a permanent recreational investment," he said. "What we really provide is all these touchstone experiences that get people outdoors doing and get them fit and give them something to talk about for a lifetime.

"That's the difference between this adventure sports paradigm and amusement parks."

What Garrett County did, Ms. Peterson said, was capitalize on what it is instead of trying to turn itself into something it isn't.

Garrett's neighbor, Allegany County, is doing some of the same.

Using the Maryland Main Street Program, a state and federal program to revitalize older communities, in the last decade Cumberland turned Baltimore Street -- part of the city's downtown business district -- into a pedestrian mall. The city has also revitalized its old railroad station, and there are shops at Canal Place, near the station and along the bike trail.

This year, during the last weekend in August, a group of residents that includes Doug "Hutch" Hutchins, a former brew master who owns a bike shop along the trail and sells beer-making supplies there, has organized a Wine and Beer Festival with live entertainment.

"The city has some great bone structure," Ms. Peterson said. "This could be a really ripe arts community because it's cheap to live here. For visual artists, the landscape is great. There's not a hectic pace of life, and the people are nice."

In November, The Greater Cumberland Committee worked with Selena Schmidt, executive director of the Power of 32, to pull together county officials, chamber of commerce executives and business leaders to talk about the needs of the five counties.

Like many other counties in the broader 32-county region, these five identified broadband Internet access as vital, as well as identifying ways to handle the economic boom and the environmental challenges being driven by development of natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale formation that underlies the region.

And then there is transportation.

Seeing how the construction of I-68 opened Garrett County to Washingtonians with money to spend on vacation homes, The Greater Cumberland Committee has its eye on two other potential transportation projects.

One is a link between the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Somerset and Route 68 at Grantsville, Md., in Garrett County. The other is a route south from Route 68 in Cumberland down the U.S. Route 220 line into Mineral County, W.Va.

Mineral County is not part of the Power of 32 project. Ms. Schmidt said that was a mistake in the original planning, as was the exclusion of Trumbull County in northeastern Ohio because both of those counties are part of the larger community.

The Power of 32, which has been supported in large part by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation that supports many projects in West Virginia, would like to get all people in the region to think beyond their borders, since, essentially, that is how they already live their lives.

Ms. Schmidt said one way to look at the region in a new way is to realize that Steubenville, Ohio, sits closer to the confluence of the three rivers in Pittsburgh than Greensburg does.

Back in Cumberland, Ms. Peterson said even in her organization's 11th year, state-based parochialism is still an issue when working for the economic betterment of all five counties.

"The reality is we have multiple counties in multiple states," she said. "Our challenge is how to get people to think beyond their borders. We can't just have a tourism economy; it has to be a broader economy."

The Power of 32 project, which has finished its process of community outreach, is now working with committees to develop action plans, such as creating a congressional caucus and linking the region with biking trails.

Those plans are supposed to be in place by November, when the project may be disbanded to allow other organizations to take the lead on specific issues.

"I think the recognition of what we have in common is growing," said William P. Getty, the president of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

"We had the coal industry in common and the steel industry in common. Now it's a very different economy. I think the energy opportunities and the issues that come with it have caused people to recognize more than before what we have in common."

What the group still needs to do is finalize those projects that make sense for the region and identify the organizations or people who can take charge of working to make those projects a reality.

"It's just trying to get people to see those situations where cooperation makes sense," he said.