Every US town gets one score from 0 to 100 for outdoor adventure. It combines four things: what there is to do, the wild land around it, how well it works as a base, and whether it feels like an adventure town.
How to read a score
What there is to do, how deep it goes and how close it is: climbing areas, trails, bike parks, ski areas, surf breaks, dive sites and paddling spots. A place with one world-class sport and a couple of good ones scores high; nearby spots count much more than distant ones.
Open public land around the town: national parks and forests, BLM land, wilderness, state parks and wildlife areas. More open land within reach scores higher.
Whether it works as a base: places to stay, campgrounds, food, outfitters and rental shops, and things to do on a rainy day or with kids. A handful of each is enough; a big city earns nothing extra for having hundreds.
Whether it feels like an adventure town: lots of visitor lodging for its size and a real share of outfitters and guides, rather than a city that happens to be near the outdoors.
Sports that count
Sports that make a place a destination (climbing, mountain biking, skiing, surfing) count for more than ones you can do almost anywhere.
Spots on the edge of town count far more than ones an hour away, and nothing beyond about a two-hour drive counts at all.
A town is rated on its best sports. One world-class sport plus a couple of good ones scores higher than a long list of thin ones.
Basecamp items reach full marks at small numbers. A town with a few good places to stay scores the same as a city with hundreds.
The adventure-town signals are measured per resident, so a bigger population never helps on its own.
Hotels and restaurants only count when there is real adventure nearby. A place with nothing to do is not a basecamp.
Each sport is measured against fixed anchors from US towns of 5,000+ people, so your score does not move when another town changes.
Metro access. A large metro area with strong sports nearby but little wild land of its own and few adventure-town signals is labelled “metro access”: a good place to live near the outdoors rather than a destination. The label never changes the score.
Facts come from datasets; AI is never used to supply facts.