As North Carolina’s premiere mountain destination, Watauga County is home to the state’s most alluring scenery, iconic views, and exciting outdoor recreation.
The “Imagine Watauga” plan charts a bold 15-year vision for maximizing capital infrastructure investments to create projects that elevate the visitor experience and enrich community life.
Plan
Overview
Our team collaborated with the Watauga County TDA, the Town of Boone, and other local representatives, leaders, and residents to craft a plan that will improve access to the community’s wealth of natural resources and recreation opportunities.
The plan includes custom illustrations and design schematics outlining development opportunities for enhancing downtown Boone, its surrounding communities, and the County’s blueways and trail systems, and other outdoor recreation assets.
A detailed implementation matrix suggests timeframes and key partners. Grant opportunities are identified, and recommendations are made for acquiring necessary funds to help implement the plan.
The final Imagine Watauga Action Plan provides detailed project strategies for investing in critical tourism infrastructure.
We identified four primary Action Plan Focus Areas: 1) Federal and State Parks and Trails, 2) Regional and Local Parks and Trails, 3) Rural Villages, 4) Town of Boone.
Community Engagement
The process began with extensive discovery and public engagement, including an inventory of the County’s assets, demographics, geography, and past planning efforts.
A public-facing project website and promotional video promoted a public survey to collect data from residents. A series of focus groups and personal interviews helped identify key themes that guided plan recommendations.
Destination by Design partnered with the Boone and Watauga County TDA to create “Imagine Watauga,” a countywide tourism action plan charting a bold 15-year vision for infrastructure investment. The plan identifies four primary focus areas, Federal and State Parks and Trails, Regional and Local Parks and Trails, Rural Villages, and the Town of Boone, giving local TDAs a clear roadmap for improving access to the county’s blueways, trail systems, and downtown Boone.
In North Carolina, tourism planning and recreation master planning come together most effectively at the countywide level, where a single vision has to serve both a college town and its surrounding rural villages. Imagine Watauga reflects that scope, pairing custom illustrations and design schematics for downtown Boone with recommendations for the county’s outdoor recreation assets, all tied together by a detailed implementation matrix identifying timeframes, key partners, and grant opportunities.
A 15-year tourism plan only works if it’s grounded in what residents and stakeholders actually want. Imagine Watauga was built on extensive discovery and public engagement, including an inventory of the county’s assets and demographics, a public survey, and a series of focus groups and personal interviews, ensuring the plan’s recommendations reflect real community priorities rather than assumptions about what the county’s premiere mountain destination needs next.
Tourism planning is the process of developing a strategic roadmap that guides investment in infrastructure, recreation assets, and downtown amenities to strengthen a community’s visitor economy over time. For Watauga County, that meant a detailed discovery phase, public engagement, and infrastructure master planning, translated into a 15-year action plan with clear focus areas spanning state parks, local trails, rural villages, and the Town of Boone.
Watauga County sits in the North Carolina High Country, home to the town of Boone and widely regarded as the state’s premiere mountain destination for its scenery and outdoor recreation. That reputation, combined with Boone’s role as a regional hub, shaped Imagine Watauga’s approach to balancing investment between the college town’s downtown core and the county’s more rural surrounding communities.
