Q&A with DCNR Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn

Sometimes referred to as Secretary “Fun” Dunn by Gov. Josh Shapiro, Cindy Adams Dunn is leading the Department of Conservation & Natural Resources in her second straight gubernatorial administration, having been first nominated to the role by then-Gov. Tom Wolf in 2015.

Dunn talked with City & State about the role state parks play in Pennsylvania’s tourism economy and what a new tourism campaign could mean for state parks.

The following conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

What role do you see Pennsylvania’s state parks playing in the state’s tourism and hospitality economy?

The value of outdoor recreation to the state’s economy is increasing, and is more greatly understood. We add $19 billion to the state economy – outdoor recreation in general – but public lands are the backbone of that: $5.4 billion of that is from tourism, and $1.3 billion is generated just from lodging for outdoor recreation.

Our director of outdoor recreation is traveling the state, proselytizing about the value of outdoor recreation to the many small businesses it supports, such as restaurants, outfitters, hotels, and shops. So it’s big – really big. 

What kind of impact did the pandemic have on public interest in parks?

We've been seeing an increase in outdoor recreation and outdoor activity for a while before COVID, but the pandemic gave it rocket fuel. We shot up from a little below 40 million visitors to 48 million during the pandemic. To me, though, the biggest asset we got from that was that people began to understand recreation as essential and started to see it as something for mental health and physical health, and we've seen that continue to grow. 

How do you see the “Great American Getaway” tourism campaign affecting state parks? 

People are camping more. Our campgrounds, in some areas, are filling up. Our cabin rentals are filling up. People are truly looking at the public lands as the heart of their getaway, and we're trying to add and improve amenities to meet that need. There are some areas where we’re seeing overuse; that actually hurts the resource. So we’re trying to create new opportunities and also do our best to steward the resource so it doesn't suffer the impact of too many feet. That's not an uncommon problem. Other states have experienced that during and after COVID. But we're trying to increase the programming so that when people come, they're perhaps in a guided program or going to an event. 

Maybe, traditionally, people thought of a park as something you do in the summer – you go on a picnic. But we're trying to promote all four seasons in terms of the Great American Getaway. For instance, we've got many winter festivals and events happening now. Spring is huge, with everything from nature walks to enjoying the parks and hiking. Summer is always huge – swimming, picnicking and camping. Fall is leaf-peeping, hiking. We really try to boost interest in the seasonal changes in the parks. 

In 2022, the state announced the creation of multiple new state parks – one in York County, one in Wyoming County, and one in Chester County. How did these parks come to be?

During the COVID pandemic, we saw such a spike in interest in visitation. We have parks that reached capacity – just overfull. Sadly, summer weekends they were beyond capacity so the gates closed. We experienced the need, and we had underrepresented types of places, like, for instance, Vosburg in Wyoming County. Wyoming County is one of the counties that didn’t have any state parks. We have 67 counties, 124 state parks – but there was nothing in Wyoming County. It's a small county, but it's a 45-minute drive from the Wyoming Valley – Scranton, Wilkes Barre. This is an amazing geologic feature on the Susquehanna River, a big bend and cliff. We saw the opportunity to create a state park there. The local folks had been asking for it for a while, and it's just a gorgeous piece of the Susquehanna.

Big Elk Creek State Park, in southern Chester County, features a mile and a half of Mason-Dixon Line. Talk about a historical place. It borders a big Maryland state park and is practically walking distance to Delaware’s White Clay Creek State Park. It's one of the few free-flowing streams that go right to Chesapeake Bay from Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful piece of land in a fast-growing county.