Tooele County: Utah's second-largest county seeks to draw more tourists and recreationists.

• Position: SPECIAL REPORT: TOOELE COUNTY

Looking for a staycation destination? Try Tooele County: beautiful vistas, unique entertainment, and fantastic hunting and fishing, all a short drive away from the Salt Lake Valley.

At least, that's the message Tooele County officials are hoping to spread as they look to change their rural home's reputation from being a swath of desert on the way to somewhere else to becoming a destination in its own right.

"We want to diversify our local economy, and we think tourism is a good way to do that," says Tooele County Commissioner Shawn Milne. "We realized we need to be more professional about this than we--a rural county turning suburban--have ever done before."

Allocating resources

The county has been making a concerted effort over the last few years to form a brand identity for the area. John Cluff, chairman of Tooele County Tourism Tax Advisory Board, says the more clearly defined direction has meant a shift in the way things have been done for a long time. The all-volunteer board reviews applications for and awards grant money from collected tourism taxes to organizations and events that would encourage more tourism to the county--funds that can only be used for such purposes.

Cluff says the county's tighter definition of what things are actually likely to bring in more tourists has altered what projects get funded.

"What we found was [the commission was] spending money on projects that were in the gray area of what it was legal to spend tax dollars on," he says. Of the 41 applications totaling $1.2 million this year, the board recommended--and the commission granted--nearly 30 projects for the more than $300,000 in funding. "We ended up with a list of grant applications that we felt like were legal and to some extent advanced tourism," he says. The advisory board made those recommendations, and "the commission went along with them. [The commission] has really started listening to us."

But in a small community, it can be tough to be stringent without stepping on neighbors' toes.

"We have some organizations that have been receiving some money every year that are not very happy with us not awarding to them," Cluff says. Among them was a community requesting funds to build new restrooms in their city park, and a private company that wanted a grant to build infrastructure that could attract tourists. In the case of the latter, he says, the board offered support with out-of-county advertising, but couldn't justify the project itself.

Some...