Mountain biking trails are a catalyst for economic growth in northwestern Pennsylvania
Use of the Trails at Jakes Rock jumped by 14% after it was recognized by the state.
Ask a mountain biker where they love riding in Pennsylvania and it’s likely you’ll hear “Jakes” as the response.
“Any Pennsylvania mountain biker, if you ask him, Hey, have you been to Jakes? and they have been there, they’ll say, Oh yeah, it’s fantastic,” said Nathan Reigner, a mountain biker and the state’s first director of outdoor recreation.
“They’ll tell you their story, and they’ll tell you about their plan to go back,” Reigner added. “If they haven’t been there, they’ll tell you that it’s at the top of their bucket list.”
For those not used to traversing Pennsylvania’s mountains on two wheels, Jakes is a reference to the Trails at Jakes Rocks, a 35-mile trail system in the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania’s Warren County. Earlier this year, state officials named Jakes as Trail of the Year, a designation meant to draw attention to both the Warren County trails and the state’s outdoor recreation opportunities in general.
State officials and community leaders from Warren County gathered in September to celebrate the designation.
“We proudly celebrate the 2024 trail of the year, the Trails at Jakes Rocks, for the wonderful health and wellness opportunities the trail system provides, and the economic impact it brings to Warren County,” state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources secretary Cindy Adams Dunn said in a Sept. 6 press release. “With this honor, we expect to see even more people hiking, biking and running around these trails, and are hopeful the trail system is a gateway to adventures in the surrounding Allegheny National Forest.”
The Trails at Jakes Rocks opened in 2016 and has gone on to draw 25,000 users each year and generate $9 million in annual tourism spending, according to Dunn’s department. The trails are used primarily for mountain biking, but hiking, running and cross-country skiing are also permitted.
Jakes has drawn mountain bikers from throughout the commonwealth to the trails that take them through rocky and forested terrain, Reigner said. Now state and local officials hope to grow that recognition among the general public in an effort both to connect Pennsylvanians with the state’s trails system, which covers more than 12,000 miles, and to generate economic activity in a more rural part of the state.
The Trail of the Year designation has already helped to boost the public’s awareness of Jakes, Warren County Chamber of Business and Industry president Jim Decker said in a press release in September. Since being named trail of the year, the number of users of Jakes Rocks has jumped by 14% in 2024 over 2023, Decker said.
“The impact that the Trails at Jakes Rocks has made on Warren County has far surpassed our expectations,” Decker said in a prepared statement issued when the state first announced the selection of the Trail of the Year in January. “Locally, we have long recognized the unique beauty and outdoor recreational opportunities our region offers and celebrate the catalyst that the Trails at Jakes Rocks has provided to allow us to share these attributes to a much larger audience.”
Growing that awareness of the Trails at Jakes Rocks will boost economic development in the area, Reigner said.
“It really elevates the power of that quality-of-life impact and gives economic developers, gives business recruiters a very strong tool to use in their efforts,” Reigner said.
Creating stronger connections between residents and public lands can play a critical role in an area’s economic growth, Reigner said. He pointed to other communities that have grown in large part because of their proximity to public lands, including in western North Carolina and the Wasatch Front region in north-central Utah. He noted, “By stimulating recreation-based economies with trails like the Trails at Jakes Rocks, we create mom-and-pop shop opportunities, whether that be Warren Cycle Shop, Bent Run Brewing in a place like Warren that provides services to users of the trails.”
The growth around Warren County’s trails comes as Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is working to boost state support for outdoor recreation activities in the commonwealth. In 2023, the administration launched the Pennsylvania Office of Outdoor Recreation; the following year, Shapiro formed the Outdoor Business Alliance.
“As the Shapiro administration really works to deliver economic development results to the commonwealth through the new economic development strategy, the first comprehensive strategy that we’ve had in 20 or more years, we see a lot of good reason to lean into this kind of trail development, not just for the recreational goodness of it all but for the cold hard cash reasons of economic development as well,” Reigner said.
