By Stephen Smoot
“The great turnout this year is a testament to the continued draw that it has for people from all over the country,” said Annie Humes of the impact of The Treasure Mountain Festival. Humes is the executive director of the Pendleton County Convention and Visitors Bureau and a TMF Association volunteer.
Humes shared her impressions of the 2025 event and also how it has developed in recent years. One of her measures of success is the number of people who anecdotally shared that they plan long trips around TMF. She explained, “When you talk about what counts as success for a tourism destination, one of the greatest achievements is when folks become loyal visitors who always choose to spend their leisure time with you.”
Pendleton County’s CVB faces a 50-mile legal limit on tourism promotion, being unable to aim efforts directly at close-by communities. Humes shared that the CVB followed allowed paths to promotion, including purchasing a banner to hang near the CVB office, “featuring the festival in our monthly email newsletter that has almost a thousand subscribers,” and buying “radio spots which broadcast all the way into Pennsylvania.”
“Of course, we did all the social media reposting we could keep up with,” added Humes.
She went on to discuss how to further integrate the CVB into TMF plans more effectively for 2026. “I’ve spent a lot of time observing the ways that other festivals around the region promote their activities,” stated Humes. She has looked to those efforts to discern what will fit with TMF and also sought out statewide and other event calendars to spread information.
Another angle lies in building coordination between the different businesses that serve tourists in Pendleton County. She said, “My hope is that in the months leading up to the festival next year, we will be able to support folks throughout the county in making the most of the festival’s draw.”
Humes and the CVB also held its regular monthly meeting for September prior to TMF. One of the main orders of business, as the 2025 tourism season slowly fades, is planning the annual retreat.
Lindsay Kazarick, who heads the CVB board, stated that the goals for the retreat included working on accreditation requirements and materials, “do larger scale planning (and) longer term strategic planning” as well as “spend a little bit of time together.”
She also asked board members and Humes to “think about the big picture of the tourism economy of our county.”
Board members heard an update on the planned welcome signs for Pendleton County, which will initially grace the two points where US Route 33 enters and exits the county. Humes called the design “well put together” and said, “you know you’re in Pendleton County.”
Signs will cost $15,000 each and extend 10 feet in width from post to post. They will be positioned 10 feet from the ground to the bottom of the supporting t-post.
During the summer, the CVB ran a digital advertising campaign that the board learned was a great success. Humes shared that “over five million individual people saw our ad” and that 46,000 of those clicked on the site to navigate it and learn more. The trends of who clicked on the site and when, under analysis, revealed the likelihood that many had landed on the site while planning a weekend getaway.
Additionally in August alone “we had 302,000 Facebook views.” Humes called the ad’s outcomes “a massive, massive uptick.”
