Off-Road Tourism Revving Up Arkansas’ Economy

Bradley Striplin of Oxford, Mississippi, is shown prepping his off-road vehicle at Mack’s Pines Recreational Area outside of Dover (Pope County). Striplin, a former firefighter, came with several other former firefighters and their families to spend the weekend exploring the trails on their off-road vehicles. (Michael Woods)

Pam Ferguson has been exploring Arkansas’ outdoors from the seat of an all-terrain vehicle for four decades.

She has since been joined by thousands of others in a fast-growing segment of the state’s tourism sector. Ferguson, 71, is the secretary-treasurer of the Ouachita ATV Club in Mena, where the nearby Wolf Pen Gap became the state’s first ATV trail system in 1991.

Arkansas’ trail network for off-road vehicles has grown dramatically since those modest early days. The industry’s economic impact has, too.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, off-road adventure tourism generated $90.1 million in economic activity for Arkansas in 2022, a nearly 13% increase from the previous year. It is a significant increase from $54.3 million in 2017.

“That’s a pretty amazing percentage change,” said Katherine Andrews, the director of the state’s Office of Outdoor Recreation, a division of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage & Tourism.

Ferguson has been at the center of it from the start. Her ATV club has about 450 members across the nation. They come to Arkansas to see the enjoy sights like the overlooks and waterfalls at Wolf Pen. Wolf Pen’s trails were created by the U.S. Forest Service from old logging roads in the Ouachita National Forest.

Ferguson said out-of-state visitors have been making adventure vacation trips to Wolf Pen for 20 years.

“People love the ATVs, and back then it was just ATVs, four-wheelers,” Ferguson said. “People love the mountains here. Back then most of the people were from Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, [from] more or less flat land. They don’t have the mountains and the trees and stuff like we do here.

“And the people loved it.”

Ferguson’s first ATV was a three-wheeler, which is seldom seen nowadays because of the vehicle’s roll hazard, especially on off-road trails.

Three-wheelers quickly gave way to safer four-wheelers, commonly referred to as ATVs. They have motorcycle-style seats and handlebars.

ATV vs. UTV

As the activity has grown in popularity, so too has the variety of vehicles. One of the most important advances is the recreational utility task vehicle (UTV), originally used by farmers and ranchers and resembling a rugged and much more powerfully built golf cart.

UTVs, often interchangeably called side-by-sides, have seating for up to six people and are workhorses in the wild. They are also safer and easier to handle and have become popular with the weekend warrior-type outdoor tourist.

A visit to an ATV trailhead can commonly reveal a traditional adrenaline adventurer on a four-wheeler or motorcycle, or a family in a side-by-side with a picnic lunch.

“Now it has evolved to UTV usage for the most part now. We still have plenty of ATVs, which would be your four-wheelers, but the UTVs have definitely brought a whole different perspective,” said Greg Simpson, who owns Mack’s Pines Recreational Area outside of Dover. “Whereas, it used to be the guys would go and some girls, but not a whole lot of women or family-type situations.

“It used to be mostly guys, and it would be one to two people, tops, on an ATV, versus what you have now, which is bringing the whole family to dogs and cats.”

Simpson bought Mack’s Pines five years ago from the family of Mack Gamble, who owned it from 1989 to 2019. Simpson, 64, grew up riding dirt bikes and has seen the evolution of outdoor recreation.

“I’ve seen a total revolution of the entire deal,” Simpson said. “Because, like I said, some [UTVs] can hold up to about six people. You got your grill, you got your cooler, got all your tools, you got your spare tire, everything.”

Natural Resource

The off-road trails in Arkansas are predominantly on National Forest lands and maintained by a combination of the Forest Service and private partners, such as Ferguson’s ATV club.

“Our club has put about $600,000 in the trails over the past 10 years or so,” Ferguson said.

Andrews said her department works with local stakeholders to help find funding for projects such as off-road trails.

In northwest Arkansas, as well as the rest of the state, heirs of Sam Walton have provided money to help build biking trails.

Andrews said the state might not provide much direct funding but it can be a valuable resource nonetheless.

“We give out around $12 [million] to $15 million in the state to build parks and trails and all kinds of outdoor recruiting infrastructure,” Andrews said. “So we are doing a lot to help build some of that infrastructure. There’s a lot of monies out there that cities and counties are taking advantage of and nonprofits are taking advantage of to build infrastructure. One of our roles is to help promote that.

“We talk with mayors, county judges, legislators. We put it out on our social media. We go to municipal leagues and all of those different conferences and meetings just to share these great opportunities. And then we work very closely with tourism so that they can help promote these places once they’re built.”

Many of the trail systems in National Park areas are are not open to all vehicles. An ATV barreling down a trail can’t share it with a hiker or a horseback rider. Also, the growing prevalence of UTVs, which are much heavier than ATVs and motorcycles, can cause damage to trails, so Andrews and others in the industry are focused on protecting the resources that make off-roading such an attraction.

“We try to educate the public on our website on what’s admissible, what’s not, what is tolerated, what’s not, and so on,” Simpson said. “So it’s a collaboration between business and Forest Service, to keep the people that come here mindful of what they’re supposed to be doing and what they’re not supposed to be doing, where they’re supposed to go, where they’re not supposed to go.

“That’s an important consideration because if you have a bunch of guys going down there and digging around and drinking and tearing up trails and tearing up the forest, then it’s going to shut it down for everybody.”