Still attending the annual Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau celebration via Zoom, 66 advocates for county tourism celebrated a bright spot in a year of shutdowns and separations Thursday evening.

Cindy Adams Dunn, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, praised the many state parks and their work to draw record-breaking crowds during the pandemic.

“It was a great year for the outdoors, more essential than ever before,” Dunn said. “People flocked to the outdoors in record-breaking numbers, for their health — and mental health.”

Outdoor tourism was the saving grace for many Butler County retail, restaurant and other businesses, at least in terms of how much the pandemic restrictions didn’t already cripple them.

Statewide, she said, bike sales were up 125% and kayak sales were up 85%, year over year, from 2019 to 2020. “Campers and RVs were hard to get,” Dunn said.

Tourists took advantage of several gems in the county, including Moraine State Park (in which its 50th anniversary last year still keeps them celebrating), and the park’s Lake Arthur; McConnells Mill State Park just over the county line in Lawrence County; and the Jennings Environmental Education Center in Brady Township.

Recently, the Maryland-based nonprofit conservation agency Old-Growth Forest Network inducted 120 forests in 24 states, including 12 in Pennsylvania, one of which was McConnells Mill State Park.

Moraine Preservation Foundation launched Preston’s Pearl tour boat, and early last month the Moraine, McConnells Mill and Jennings Commission planted Jennings’ signature blazing star among other flowers in its 20-acre prairie.

During the entire length of the pandemic, with great success, the parks remained open, Dunn said. In some cases, she said, park cabin systems were so busy it was difficult to book a reservation.

Of course, the two largest challenges, Dunn said, were the upticks in safety incidents and increasing amounts of litter.

Regardless, outdoor tourism provided a big economic boost, in which Pennsylvania ranks fifth in the country, Dunn said.

For many Eagle readers suffering through the worst of the pandemic, the Butler outdoors ranked first.

— AA