Rural America Vol. 17 Issue 4

Recent migration trends, fueled in part by the Nation’s love of forests, water, and other natural amenities, are altering the rural landscape. Since the late 1960s, the United States has seen both continued growth of metro populations and renewed population increase in many nonmetro counties. There has been a move toward population deconcentration, reflected both in the tendency of settlement to sprawl outward from large, densely settled urban cores and in the recent rural demographic rebound. One factor contributing to deconcentration is movement into areas rich in natural amenities and other recreational attractions. Recreational areas have long attracted large numbers of visitors. Recent data show that they are also attracting many permanent residents. Once vacationers discover an area they like, many make return visits, eventually buy a second home there, and finally migrate to establish their primary residence in the area (Stewart and Stynes). Research has found that a substantial proportion of second home owners expect to retire to their second home within 10 years (Stynes et al., Johnson and Stewart). Increased recreational activity, the appeal of second homes, and the influx of former urbanites into rural areas all create a demand for housing and for an expanded business, service and governmental infrastructure to support it. By increasing local employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, the flow of visitors and inmigrants also encourages many current residents to remain, further bolstering the population. With the baby boom generation fast approaching an age where leisure activities will increase and retirement migration will peak, the implications of recreational activities for future overall nonmetro migration and population growth are substantial. This article modifies and updates our earlier effort to identify recreational counties (Beale and Johnson), examines the linkages between recreational concentrations and population changes, and considers the implications of these for nonmetro America. Based on the empirical and contextual analysis (see box, “How Recreation Counties Were Identified,” p. 14), 329 nonmetro counties were classed as recreational (44 more than in our earlier work where somewhat different data and procedures were used). They comprise 14.6 percent of all nonmetro counties and have 15.6 12