Outdoor Recreation Study of the Foot Hills Forest Area, Summer & Fall 2004

The Foot Hills area is located in southern Cass County, near the periphery of Minnesota's northern forest region. The area is one the first forest settings encountered when traveling to the northwoods from Minnesota's primary population concentration in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The area encompasses both the public forestland within the statutory boundaries of Foot Hills State Forest, and the public forestland adjacent to the State Forest. The public forestland is a mix of state- and county-administered land.

Similar to many other public forestlands in Minnesota, the Foot Hills area is managed under a multiple-use policy for a variety of purposes: timber production, wildlife habitat, environmental protection, and outdoor recreation. The outdoor recreation in the Foot Hills area is of a rustic and self-directed nature. Recreation activities include hunting, off-highway vehicle riding, hiking, camping, bird watching and so on.

This outdoor recreation study of the Foot Hills area was designed to determine the type and quantity of recreation activities in the area, as well as the characteristics, experiences and opinions of visitors to the area. The study is a "pilot", which means that—in addition to gathering information about the Foot Hills area—the study is testing and refining a methodology that can be applied to other public forestland areas.

In the study, the type and quantity of recreation use in the area was obtained both from visitors gaining access to the forest from public-entry sites and from visitors gaining access to the public forest land directly from adjacent private lands. Information concerning the characteristics, experiences, and opinions of visitors to the area was obtained from two surveys: a public-entry site visitor survey, and an adjacent private-land owner survey.

The Foot Hills study was a cooperative research project of Cass County and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

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