If you build it, will they come?

National forests have a wealth of natural amenities that attract over 175 million recreational visitors a year. Although natural amenities draw visitors to national forests, many of the recreational activities that they engage in require built amenities, such as roads, campgrounds, boat ramps, and trails. We estimate regression models of the effect of two common built amenities-campgrounds and picnic areas-on national-forest visitation controlling for natural amenities and accounting for the endogenous relationship between visitation and built amenities. We found that campgrounds and picnic areas are significantly and positively correlated with visitation.