9/25/2008

The city of Broken Bow is listed as one of Southern Living’s ‘three favorite trips for fall’ in the Octo-ber issue of that magazine.

The article, which highlights three locations chosen by the magazine’s travel editors, lauds the natural beauty of the Broken Bow/Beavers Bend area. The area was selected for inclusion by travel editor Karen Lingo.

In the more extensive, online version of the article, a variety of local activities are listed. Canoeing, fishing, golfing, and other pastimes available in the Broken Bow area are mentioned, as is the November Folk Festival and Craft Show. The presence of American bald eagles in the area during the autumn, a treat for local and visiting bird-watchers, is noted.

Also in the online article, three local restaurants are promoted as excellent places to dine during a visitor’s stay. A local fishing guide and fishing supply store are pro-moted. The Lakeview Lodge and various Beavers Bend cabins are mentioned by name, but the article does provide information on how to easily book other local accommo-dation through the Chamber of Commerce.

Broken Bow has been previously featured in the magazine’s regional articles. The October edition, how-ever, marks the first time the city has been included in the nationally-distributed section of the magazine.

“This is huge,” says Charity O’Donnell, executive director of the Broken Bow Chamber of Com-merce. “We’ve never had exposure like this. The magazine actually gave me a form that we could send back, saying how much of an in-crease in tourism we saw [due to the article].”

The October issue of the maga-zine will be available on news-stands soon. Response to the arti-cle from potential visitors is ex-pected, probably in the form of increased customer inquiries.

“Whenever something like this is printed or we have an ad run on TV in some other area, whether it’s Dallas, Shreveport, or somewhere else, we always see a surge in phone calls,” says Jim Miller, Bea-vers Bend park manager. “I think this is great for the park, and great for the county. It’s wonderful to be recognized in a national magazine. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

Cumberland Gap, Ky., and Greenville, S.C., were the maga-zine’s other favorite fall vacation choices.

Southern Living is a widely dis-tributed magazine owned by Time Inc. and published in Birmingham, Ala. It is one of the largest re-gional lifestyle publications in the United States.