County
A county is healthier when people get outside, spend money with their neighbors, and eat what local farms grow. This scorecard measures all three and pairs them with the Hometown Passport, a challenge that gets residents to go out and do them.
🌲 Get Outside
Parks, state forests, game lands, rail trails and campgrounds residents can reach.
🛍️ Buy Local
How much of Main Street is independent, and how many people work for small local employers.
🌽 Grow Local
Farm stands, farmers markets and the county's agricultural economy.
🎟️ Hometown Passport
A bingo-style challenge that turns all three into things residents actually do, with FFH coins.
Rural Prosperity Index Pilot v0.1
Ranked against Pennsylvania's 48 rural counties.
🌲 Get Outside in
Every named park, state forest, game land and trail on this map comes live from OpenStreetMap. Click "Load the live map" to pull today's version.
Outdoor places map Live
💡 Park Rx
Partner with the county's FQHC and hospital to "prescribe" a named trail from this map. Each completed walk logs in the Passport.
💡 Trail Towns
Pair each trailhead with the nearest independent café or outfitter. Visitors get a Passport stamp, and the shop gets foot traffic.
💡 Map-a-thon
A pocket park or ballfield that isn't on this map is invisible to visitors. Students can add it as a Passport square.
🛍️ Buy Local in
This page answers two questions: how much of Main Street is independently owned, and how much of the local economy runs on small employers and the self-employed.
Independent vs. chain Snapshot
Mapped storefronts and eateries. Places tagged with a national brand count as chains.
Small-business economy Live · Census
💡 $10 Local Challenge
If every household moves $10 a week from a chain to an independent shop, the county keeps more of that spending circulating locally. Track it with Passport receipts.
💡 SBDC Office Hours on Main Street
Hold pop-up SBDC consulting at the farmers market. Businesses that join earn the Passport "Local Maker" badge.
💡 Small Business Saturday
Run a county-wide Passport weekend with the Chamber. The Region View shows which counties ran one and how many residents took part.
🌽 Grow Local in
Farm stands and farmers markets are the most under-mapped places in rural America. This page shows what is already mapped and links to the official farm economy numbers. The pilot then helps every stand get listed.
Mapped farm stands & markets Live
The official farm economy
Farm counts, acres, direct-to-consumer sales and agritourism come from the USDA Census of Agriculture county profile. Ag support businesses (sawmills, timber, ag services) appear in Buy Local.
USDA county profiles ↗ PA Dept. of Agriculture ↗
🎟️ Hometown Passport ·
Twelve squares, three pillars. Tap a square when you've done it. Each square earns 25 LIVE It coins in your FFH wallet, and a full card earns the Hometown Hero badge.
More Know Your Community challenges
🗺️ Region View
Build any multi-county region, such as an SBDC service area, a workforce board or a tourism region, and compare every county side by side. The link updates as you pick counties, so you can share the exact view.
Pick up to 67 counties. Rural counties are solid.
Asset counts are an OpenStreetMap snapshot (see Methods). Small-employer data loads live from the Census Bureau for one county at a time on the Buy Local page.
❤️ Why parks, Main Street and farms are health
FFH's PHIT™ framework scores community health across Physical, Mental, Social and Environmental lenses. These three pillars move all four.
🌲 Get Outside → Physical + Mental
Residents who can reach a park, trail or forest are more likely to be physically active, and time in nature is linked to lower stress. Rural counties often have abundant land but few named, mapped, welcoming access points.
🛍️ Buy Local → Social + Economic stability
Income and stable work are among the strongest drivers of health. Locally owned businesses keep more of each dollar circulating locally and anchor the third places where neighbors meet.
🌽 Grow Local → Nutrition + Environment
Farm stands and markets bring fresh food into areas that may lack a full grocery store, and they keep farmland working.
🎟️ Passport → Engagement & Literacy
Engagement is one of PHIT's five scored components. Passport activity gives the county a measurable engagement signal that can be reported to funders.
📘 Methods & Sources
Data sources
- Outdoor, Main Street and farm assets: OpenStreetMap via the Overpass API. Counts come from a statewide snapshot taken . Any county not in the snapshot is counted live the first time it's opened, and maps and lists always load live. Parks =
leisure=park. Protected land =boundary=protected_areaorleisure=nature_reserve, which covers state forests, state parks and state game lands. Trails = hiking, foot, bicycle and mountain-bike route relations. Farm & market =amenity=marketplaceorshop=farm. Independent = a shop or eatery without abrandtag. - Small-business economy: U.S. Census Bureau County Business Patterns and Nonemployer Statistics, loaded live through FFH's
/api/local-business. - Population, county seats and rural status: the My Healthy PA county table, with the 48 rural counties as defined by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.
- Farm economy: USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2022 county profiles (linked, not re-published).
Rural Prosperity Index (pilot v0.1)
Four pillars, each scored 0–100 by percentile rank among Pennsylvania's 48 rural counties, then averaged:
- Outdoor Access: parks + protected areas + trails + campgrounds per 10,000 residents
- Main Street Independence: the independent share of mapped shops and eateries
- Local Food: mapped farm stands and markets per 10,000 residents
- Mapped Presence: total mapped local businesses per 10,000 residents. A low score usually means the county is under-mapped, not empty, which is itself a fixable visibility gap for tourism and SBDC clients.
Honest limits: OpenStreetMap is community-built, so rural coverage is uneven. The index measures what visitors and apps can find, and the Passport and Map-a-thon squares exist to close that gap. Census does not publish where a business's owner lives, so "locally owned" is approximated by independent (unbranded) storefronts plus small employers and the self-employed.