A new initiative in tourism development ��. South Dakota's Oyate Trail

South Dakota is a state of sharp contrasts. Divided almost equally by the Missouri River into eastern and western halves, it is a land of rich wheat and cattle farms, small towns, and the hardworking people that settled the agricultural West. At the same time, it is a land of dramatic scenery, rugged landscapes, and thick forests. The southwestern part of the state has contributed to the legend of the Wild West, with tales of gold miners striking it rich, gunfighters shooting it out, and gamblers staking their lives on the turn of a card.

This remarkable state has two massive granite mountain sculptures--Mount Rushmore, into which the faces of four popular American presidents have been carved in stone, and the Crazy Horse sculpture, a similar memorial to the great Sioux Indian Chief Crazy Horse.

South Dakota has a magnificent rural environment and a rich history and culture that is currently receiving special attention through a new initiative in tourism development.

In May 1992, a group of South Dakotans--including arts supporters, tourism leaders, historic preservation officials, private business owners, and tribal representatives--met in the Mission, South Dakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, to formulate an economic and cultural development plan for developing tourism in southern South Dakota.

Taking into consideration the area's existing assets, the group devised a strategy to inventory, develop, and promote cultural, artistic, and historic resources along Highway 18/50, a southern passage across South Dakota. Because of the significance of the Dakota and Lakota Sioux culture and its appeal to visitors, the group named the project area the Oyate Trail to reflect its cultural diversity. Oyate (oh-YAH-tay), in the Dakota/Lakota language, means people or nation. Ochanku (ohCHAHNG-koo) means well traveled road. Therefore, Oyate Ochanku serves as the project's working title.

The proposed 388-mile route, with its planned scenic, cultural, and arts tour loops, has over a dozen established arts institutions that provide unique cultural opportunities for off-the-Interstate travelers. Arts organizations and attractions along the Oyate Trail are as varied as the scenery. The route includes such sites as the world famous Shrine to Music Museum in Vermillion; a Czechoslovakian arts festival in Tabor; cowboy poets in Martin; Dakota Territory's first capital in Yankton; and Native American powwows, museums, and arts centers on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservations.

Oyate Trail development has been the inspiration for many diverse groups of South Dakotans to join forces. The South Dakota Arts Council, working very closely with the state departments of Tourism and Economic Development, has taken the lead in the project. The South Dakota Presidential Council on Rural Development and chambers of commerce from Vermillion to Hot Springs are also lending support. And, the project's diverse steering committee includes representatives from Indian tribes, local arts agencies, state offices, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

Recently completed research studies will be used to help inventory tourism resources along the Oyate Trail. Project coordinators will analyze the results of the South Dakota Planning and Development District III inventory of the 14 counties encompassed by this project, the Oglala Sioux Tribe's cultural resources study of the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation, and the South Dakota Department of Tourism's study of Missouri River resources.

The effort by South Dakota is a unique and far-sighted endeavor which combines two crucially important emerging areas in international and domestic tourism development in the United States--rural tourism and multicultural tourism. Rural and multicultural tourism development in the 1990s are major initiatives of the Department of Commerce's United States Travel and Tourism Administration (USTTA).

The Oyate Trail, by means of its proposed locations and theme, unites these two tourism development approaches and can serve as a model for similar projects in other under-utilized rural areas of the United States.

The above project is an example of a larger framework that demonstrates that tourism can be an important economic development tool in rural and culturally rich areas as part of the Administration's goal of building a strong and vital and competitive economy. The Travel and Tourism Administration's programs are designed to support U.S. states, cities, regions, and private industry with special emphasis on small business, cultural, and ethnic communities, and rural areas.

The problems of rural areas are well documented. The decline of family-owned farms, the failure of various industries, and the loss of mineral resources have created population loss, especially among better educated youth and skilled workers.

Residents of rural communities lag behind in education. Across the country, the economic competitiveness of rural areas is declining, in part because rural communities are dependent upon too few sources of income. Much of rural America is, and historically has been, poor. Yet, the federal government has provided record levels of price and income support to farmers over the last decade. The "farm crisis" has now spread beyond the farm into businesses which traditionally have catered to the farmer.

Economic planners say that new industries must be developed to replace those that are dying and are no longer competitive, that underdeveloped rural resources must be utilized, and that rural Americans must be taught new skills. They also point out that non-metropolitan counties that depended on tourism, retirement income, and specialized government spending exhibited much greater stability during the 1981-82 recession than those that were dependent on rural manufacturing, farming, coal mining, or oil-drilling. Although agriculture remains the most important industry in rural America, it now employs relatively few people. Of America's 2,400 rural counties only approximately 400 are considered agriculturally dependent.

Rural communities are seeking alternatives to economic development other than the once dominant industries of farming, ranching, and mining. Many areas are looking towards more sustainable resources as a development tool. Tourism is a highly viable option because its implementation relies on an area's cultural, historic, ethnic, geographic, and national uniqueness. Such changes are increasingly being viewed as opportunities for keeping rural communities economically viable.

Defining rural America as all areas having less than 50,000 inhabitants, rural America includes about 25 percent of the U.S. population and 90 percent of its natural resources. Rural environments have vast expanses of land and water, and wide diversity in their mountains, plains, forests, grasslands, and deserts that not only provide outstanding settings for leisure and recreation but also are the commodities for a basic tourism product. In addition to acting as a stimulus to rural economies, tourism has the capability to preserve the environment in which it operates.

Central to this is USTTA's development of an educational outreach program that provides training for rural communities interested in tourism as an economic development tool. With this mission in mind, USTTA hopes to help establish a cadre of professionals in every state capable of providing technical help, information, or other assistance to rural communities interested in tourism development. Critical to this objective is the need for developing a networking relationship between local, county, and federal participants, along with the private sector, as rural tourism becomes an increasingly more important part of total tourism development.

To continue providing both educational and networking opportunities, USTTA is holding a Second National Rural Tourism Development Conference in Rapid City, South Dakota, April 26-28, 1993, in conjunction with the National Association of State Development Agencies' (NASDA) Third Annual National Conference on Tourism Development (April 28-29). The purpose of the Conference is to continue development and training of a nationwide team of individuals able to work with local community leadership to make their areas attractive to tourism. The program seeks to define and establish municipal tourism policies that will assist state or political subdivisions in making tourism an economic development priority.

Another important organization to assist in the development and promotion or rural tourism is the newly established (March 1993) Rural Tourism Development Foundation. This Foundation was mandated under the Tourism Policy and Export Promotion Act of 1992. The functions of the Foundation "... shall be the planning, development, and implementation of projects and programs which have the potential to increase travel and tourism export revenue by attracting foreign visitors to rural America."

Small towns and culturally endowed locations across America are beginning to realize that the development potential tourism offers is attainable through the marketing of their communities both domestically and internationally. Visitors from across the globe have expressed an interest in seeing the Heart of America, the frontier, often on tourism routes or theme itineraries linking historical, cultural, an natural attractions. This is having an economic multiplier effect on a diversity of travel industry sectors--bus companies bringing international travelers to rural sections of the United States, the enhancement of Scenic Byways travel programming, and the conscientious integration of recreation and its byproducts, such as recreation vehicular travel, with sustainable tourism in rural areas.

Distribution considerations include how tourism revenues interact with other economic opportunities within the community and within the family unit. The income that is generated by rural and multicultural tourism, however modest, can be utilized to revitalize the community.

The concepts of rural and multicultural tourism are essentially new. The time will come when a multiplicity of rural opportunities and cultural needs and contributions will be recognized and validated as tourism objectives. South Dakota's Oyate Trail epitomizes the progress that can be accomplished when diverse groups cooperate and coordinate their efforts toward the goal of utilizing tourism as an economic tool.

Every Foreign Visitor Is an Export

Every foreign visitor to the United States buys American goods and services. The visitor pays for hotel rooms, meals, transportation, laundry services, admission to attractions, entertainment, and usually the purchase of consumer items and souvenirs. Economists thus classify the foreign visitor as an export.

COPYRIGHT 1993 U.S. Government Printing Office
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