Jackson County Looks to Boost Tourism With Grant Funding

Jackson County officials are searching for ways to boost tourism.

Mayor Randy Heady said he hopes to gain some ideas through a grant that would study the county’s park system.

“We’re looking at ways that we can maybe promote our natural beauty and the wildlife down here and some of the resources that we have and we’ve not been capturing,” Heady said. “We are going to start a campaign the first of the year to try to capture that and try to get people in to see what we have to offer down here.”

The study would look at ways to capitalize on the county’s natural resources. Heady said the county could do that by making a park, additional campsites, hiking trails, or mountain bike trails.

“We’ve got so many resources that we are not capturing and that’s what this plan is going to look at,” Heady said. “How can we take something like Roaring River and expand on that and make it into something that would be attractable so that people would get here to see the other things that we have to offer.”

Heady said the study would be a vision for what the county could do with its natural resources.

The county commission approved a resolution to apply for the grant earlier this month.