Guest Editorial
Auburn, Calif.- A hundred years ago, Placer County shipped fruit east in railcars. Last year, people came to us instead, and they brought $1.57 billion with them.
Visitors spent $1.57 billion in Placer County last year, a 4.1% increase over 2024 and the highest figure on record. California as a whole grew tourism spending by 1.7% over the same period, which means our small county outpaced the state by more than double. That same year, our agricultural economy did something similar. The 2024 Crop Report came in at $111 million, up nearly 24% from the year before, beating a 2021 record we thought might stand for a while. While livestock and rice are the county's top commodities, Placer's signature boutique fruit crops also showed significant increases.
These two numbers tell a similar story. People are coming to Placer County for what's already here.
They want to walk a mandarin grove off Penryn Road, drive a back highway past a cattle ranch above Lincoln, and end the afternoon at a tasting room that doesn't pretend to be Napa. They want a roadside farm stand with a chalkboard sign and whatever came in that morning. None of it is fussy, and I think that's most of the appeal.
National Travel and Tourism Week kicks off May 3, and the U.S. Travel Association picked "Postmarked: Essential" as this year's theme. The point is straightforward enough. Travel isn't an extra. It's how communities stay connected to the rest of the country, how restaurants stay full, and how smaller producers find new customers. In our county, travel also plays a role in how a $111 million agricultural economy reaches kitchens and tables far beyond the foothills.
Visit Placer and PlacerGROWN have seen the link between tourism and agriculture and are working to make it stronger. If a Bay Area family drives up 80 for a long weekend, we'd love for them to leave with a bottle of olive oil pressed twenty miles from their hotel. If a Sacramento couple makes the trip for the Mandarin Festival in November, we hope they'll find a reason to come back for Sip Into Spring, then again for a u-pick weekend in July.
The newer numbers fill in the picture. Hotel and short-term rental spending in Placer County climbed 5.6% last year, to $849 million. Food service spending grew 5.2%, to $411 million. The industry supported close to 16,000 local jobs and generated $137.5 million in state and local tax revenue. Behind those figures are people choosing local: eating dinner at a Granite Bay restaurant pulling from PlacerGROWN producers, and drinking wine grown in foothill soil.
PlacerGROWN's directory has grown to 159 listings, including everything from family orchards and small wineries to farm-to-tap breweries, plant nurseries, CSA subscriptions, and u-pick farms. Beyond the directory, the county currently has dozens of roadside farm stands and 11 certified farmers' markets across seven cities from Roseville to Tahoe City. Forty-two registered organic producers work nearly 8,600 acres. The infrastructure has been quietly building for 170+ years.
The shift now is how many visitors are actively seeking it out, and the job for Visit Placer and PlacerGROWN is to build on that appetite for the Placer lifestyle without ever turning it into something it isn't. That's the conversation we're convening later this month.
On Wednesday, May 13, Visit Placer and PlacerGROWN will gather at the Flower Farm Events Barn in Loomis for the second annual Tourism and Quality of Life Summit. This year's theme is "The Placer Lifestyle: Leaning into Local." Lunch is being prepared by Hawks Restaurant of Granite Bay, sourced from PlacerGROWN producers. The closing reception will pour local wine and beer. The agenda runs from culinary tourism to agritourism policy, and throughout the day, we will be featuring food, drink and flowers from local producers .
Records like the ones we posted last year don't appear out of nowhere. They show up because growers, ranchers, vintners, restaurant owners, lodging operators and county leaders have decided that what we have here is worth protecting and worth showing off. We're going to keep doing both.