Leading a Frontier Chamber with Shelley Batty

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability and to correct obvious transcription errors while preserving the meaning of the original conversation.

Brandon Burton 00:01.11
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat podcast. I’m your host, Brandon Burton, and here on Chamber Chat, I introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community. Today’s guest is Shelly Batty. Shelly is a proud native Orgonian and with a rare distinction of having lived in every tourism region in the state of

She currently serves as the Chamber Director for the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, where she champions local business and regional tourism. Along with her husband, Shelly co-owns Tall Town Bike and Camp, a go-to hub for cyclists, skiers, hikers, and backpackers seeking to explore the breathtaking landscapes of Lake County. When she’s not promoting her community or adventuring the outdoors,

Shelley dedicates her time to civic service as president of the Lake County Library District Board and an active member of several organizations, including the Historic Society and Oregon CBB. Her passion for Oregon runs deep and she’s here today to share insights on rural tourism, community building, and life on one of the state’s most scenic and welcoming regions.

Shelley, I’m excited to have you with us today here on Chamber Chat podcast. I’d love to give you an opportunity to say hello to all the Chamber Champions who are out there listening and to share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better.

Shelley Batty 01:30.768
Okay, well, we’re in the middle of Lake County, which is known as Oregon’s Outback. Sort of a play on words because the same way of Australia’s Outback is this vast space with very few people, we are the same. Lake County is 8,000 square miles and 8,000 people, so we’re not even considered rural. We are truly frontier.

Brandon Burton 01:56.768
Wow, that is, I’m trying to wrap my head around that. 1,000 acres per person, it’s how that equates. Or square mile. Yeah, wow, even more. Wow.

Shelley Batty 02:04.86
No, a square mile per person. Right. So it’s like rural is 25 miles from any big population center. And by comparison, we are four hours from the nearest airport, four hours from the nearest freeway, four hours from the nearest big box store. We have a Safeway.

That’s about the size of a good size bodega. And other than that, nothing with a corporate logo on it.

Brandon Burton 02:39.746
Wow, that’s amazing. So that was going to be my next question is, well, have you tell us about the Lake County Chamber, size, staff, scope of work, budget, to kind of give us perspective, but often with that comes with a little bit of description about the community that you serve as well.

Shelley Batty 02:58.27
Well, the Lake County Chamber is really unique because I serve a Chamber Director for a community of 8,000 people that is the same size as the entire state of New Jersey. So I have Chamber members that are 127 miles away from my office one way. I have

Brandon Burton 03:11.832
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 03:21.294
Crazy.

Shelley Batty 03:22.266
one part-time administrative assistant so that there’s someone to answer the phone while I’m driving 127 miles one way. And our budget is about $150,000 a year plus whatever grant funding I’m able to bring in. And we have 100 members and unlimited recreational opportunities. So it’s like, which hat am I wearing? Which minute?

And we are in a really beautiful 123 year old building in the heart of downtown Lakeview, which is the only town in the state of Oregon, everything else incorporated as a city.

Brandon Burton 03:50.647
Yes.

Brandon Burton 04:08.398
Wow, that is very unique. That’s amazing.

Shelley Batty 04:10.913
It is very unique and Tall Town is kind of the background of everything because we are right at 5,000 square, 5,000 feet above sea level which makes us the highest elevation community in Oregon, hence Tall Town.

Brandon Burton 04:26.67
Okay, yeah, that’s very interesting. Very cool. Well, that leads in well to what our topic is today. It’s at the stage very well. So today we’re gonna be talking about balancing your ability and the way that you approach, I guess, to balancing the local issues, but also driving tourism development. So we’ll dive into that as soon as we get back from this quick break.

All right, Shelly, we’re back. So as I mentioned before the break, today we’re talking about for you specifically as a frontier community, how you go about balancing the local issues, especially when you got so much area to cover while also driving the tourism development. So I don’t know what part you want to start with to dive into, but let you dictate that.

Shelley Batty 05:15.282
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 05:23.857
Well, it’s always sort of a smash of doing everything all at once. Working with local businesses, you know, we’re a rural advocacy chamber. So I have most of our state and even some of our national congressmen and representatives on speed dial and making sure that they don’t forget that the

Frontier needs for small businesses are really unique. Basically, you talk about specialty retail as an example, you need 40,000 customers and 10 square miles or whatever the current version of that is. When we have 8,000 square miles and 8,000 people, you’re never going to get that tipping point of

being successful based on just the people walking in the door every day. So you have to have ways of diversifying and doing a little bit of everything or running multiple businesses because that’s what it takes to kind of piecemeal your life. And so that tourism as an economic driver to keep small businesses in business and to keep reminding people that yes, we really are out here and yes, we really do need

assistance for being able to continue this Western lifestyle that doesn’t exist almost anywhere else in the world.

Brandon Burton 06:57.024
Yeah. So I feel like you framed that very well. What are some of those, definitely uniqueness for these business owners, but as you advocate, what are some of those special considerations and needs that on a state level, and as far as advocacy goes, that you are trying to fight for, that you’re trying to draw attention to, to stand up for those businesses in your community?

Shelley Batty 07:26.503
Well, a lot of that is right now very, very tourism focused and getting that tourism dollar into the region and then advocating for health care and keeping our hospital open and how do we make that happen? Advocating for seniors because like most frontier communities, the population is aging out. Our kids are our biggest export.

so that they go away to college and then suddenly get a job opportunity that keeps them from coming back home and so there’s nobody left at home. And then there are

Brandon Burton 08:07.555
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 08:11.709
our tourism economic structure and kind of an education piece of yes, we know we need those tourism dollars, but we like being small. We like being insular. We like knowing everyone that we see on the street. So do we really want those people or just their money? And how do we make that happen?

Brandon Burton 08:33.921
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 08:35.165
My way of dealing with that is that because we’ve got so much space and we have such incredible recreational resources and natural beauty, working on telling people, know, we can get a lot of tourists in 8,000 square miles and still not feel crowded and making sure that everybody has a comfortable room.

Brandon Burton 08:52.802
Right?

Shelley Batty 08:55.793
and have great tourism partners with Travel Oregon and Travel Southern Oregon, regional destination marketing organization. In 2024, we were awarded the Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary Destination, which is two and half million acres of what is documentably the darkest skies on the planet.

It’s really easy to find Lakeview if you look at a night sky map of the state of Oregon, find the biggest black spot, and we’re in the middle of that.

Brandon Burton 09:24.366
Wow.

Brandon Burton 09:31.47
Like, that’s great. Yeah. So one of my questions is going to be part of that, that struggle of you need to drive the tourism to bring in the dollars and self support these businesses. But do the people there, the residents, do they want that? Do they want to keep it rural? Do they want, not even rural, do they want to keep it frontier? Do they, do they resist, you know,

the growth and the business come because they want to keep it small and very much the way it’s been since God created it? What kind of feedback do you get?

Shelley Batty 10:15.111
Well, I am sort of the change agent, I guess you would say. I interviewed for this job in 2013. And I was talking about adventure tourism and tourism as an economic driver for frontier communities. And one of the board members who was interviewing me said, and what if we don’t want those people here?

Brandon Burton 10:22.67
Okay.

Brandon Burton 10:44.076
Wow.

Shelley Batty 10:46.288
And they didn’t hire me. And so then in 2023, I am their choice. And they at least recognize the need for tourism, even if they’re not 100 % comfortable with the idea of all of those people coming here. But then the other side of that is

Brandon Burton 10:50.552
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:03.084
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 11:11.128
Sure.

Shelley Batty 11:14.821
As long as you don’t look at the Facebook page, these are the most friendly, welcoming, hospitable, give you the shirt off your back possible. It’s so funny that ranchers that are not at all sure that they want tourists buy inner tubes and keep a bike pump in the barn in case there is a

bicycle tourists that wanders onto their property having problems. And because we don’t have cell coverage other than right in the town limits, if you have trouble alongside the road, unlike anywhere else in the country, people are gonna stop and offer assistance and bail you out or drive you to town or whatever. So it’s a very special place and they may or may not

Brandon Burton 11:49.23
you

Brandon Burton 12:01.634
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 12:09.747
tell you they want tourists, but they are so welcoming when we do get them that it is a magnificent spot in the world.

Brandon Burton 12:15.22
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 12:19.356
Yeah, so you had mentioned the ranchers and you’ve got your business, it’s adventure tourism. What are some other examples of different industries that you guys have there in your community that keep things going, but also that might help draw tourism?

Shelley Batty 12:38.523
Well, as a dichotomy of what you would expect, Lake County, in addition to being a ranching hub, and we have some of the best alfalfa in the world, if you eat Kobe beef or something like that, chances are the feed that those animals were fed came from Lake County.

most of our alpha gets shipped overseas. It’s amazing. We also are the greenest county in the state of Oregon. We are carbon neutral. We have wind. We have solar. We have geothermal.

Brandon Burton 13:02.71
Okay.

Brandon Burton 13:14.614
Okay.

Shelley Batty 13:20.379
which not only makes for great hot springs, it also powers the state prison that we have in the county, it powers our hospital and our schools. We have a new industry in town, it’s really interesting, it’s called Ecomaterials, and they took samples of the cement from the Coliseum and reverse engineered it and have created a additive to your basic Portland

cement that’s 30 % lighter and 80 % stronger and 90 % less carbon usage to create it. And so we have a plant here in town that is making that additive through Ecomaterials and they use perlite, which is those little white bubbles that you see in like potting soil.

Brandon Burton 14:00.206
Wow.

Shelley Batty 14:18.577
and we have a pearlite mine on the outskirts of town so that Ecomaterials is right up against the property line for the pearlite mine and they simply take pearlite over the fence into their procedure. So very kind of

Brandon Burton 14:24.447
Bye.

Brandon Burton 14:35.852
Wow.

Wow. I learned something new today. I didn’t realize it’s mined like that. that’s interesting. So on the tourism side, in bringing in and drawing the tourism, obviously there’s the adventure. There’s the outback, right? How are you guys drawing the tourism? What’s the focus? What’s the draw?

Shelley Batty 14:45.617
Yes.

Shelley Batty 14:53.137
Mm-hmm.

Brandon Burton 15:07.918
How are you attracting the tourism?

Shelley Batty 15:10.173
Well, having the largest dark sky sanctuary in the world draws a lot of tourists. We also have a number of very large alkaline lakes. So we are one of the primary stopovers for birds on the Western Flyway migrating. So we get a lot of bird-watching tourists. Fort Rock and a number of other cave systems here in Lake County

Brandon Burton 15:29.558
Okay.

Shelley Batty 15:39.937
are the location of the oldest documented evidence of modern man dating back 18,000 years. So that’s really interesting. We are also really interesting in that we have Indian tribes all the way around Lake County, but no

Brandon Burton 15:52.844
Wow.

Shelley Batty 16:05.529
Indian tribal presence in the county because we were the summer powwow grounds where the different tribes from all around us would come to exchange prisoners and trade and negotiate their contracts. So everywhere you go in the county you can find evidence not of one tribe or another but of all the different tribes from the area.

Brandon Burton 16:24.706
Okay.

Shelley Batty 16:34.365
We have lot of mastodontesks being dug out of farmers’ fields and those sorts of things. We have the starting point of the Oregon Timber Trail, which is a 760-mile mountain bike path from the California border to the Washington border.

Brandon Burton 16:43.681
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 16:57.821
And while it’s not super well known nationally, in the last seven years, we’ve had people from 32 countries come specifically to Lakeview specifically to ride the trail. We are the mids point resupply for the Oregon desert trail, which is a 730 mile hiking trail that is advertised as the hiking trail for people who think the PCT is for wimps. Be prepared. It’s awesome.

Brandon Burton 17:09.698
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 17:25.122
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 17:27.775
tons of petroglyphs. We also have five world-class launch sites for hang gliders and paragliders. So it’s more launch sites in a contained area than anywhere else in North America. And all five sites have their face different directions. So regardless of which direction the wind is blowing, there’s somewhere in the county you can launch.

Brandon Burton 17:37.762
Wow.

Brandon Burton 17:51.197
The wind’s going, yeah. Wow, that’s fascinating. Yeah, yeah. So the tidbit about the Indian tribes and coming with their powwows, it just shows the long history of chambers of commerce there in Lake County, right?

Shelley Batty 17:56.477
So I think I should keep going.

Shelley Batty 18:12.477
This chamber was founded in 1932.

Brandon Burton 18:16.832
Okay, yeah. So it’s whether formal or informal, commerce has been going on there for a long time. Yeah, very cool. So I mean, you you rattled off a long list of very attractive things there in in Lake County, as should be with with part of your job. So how do you go about promoting those? I mean, obviously, you’re on a podcast today talking about them, but I assume

Shelley Batty 18:23.421
forever.

Brandon Burton 18:45.152
social media has an impact.

Shelley Batty 18:47.229
The social media has an impact. Oregon is really lucky in we have a unique tourism echo structure, I guess. In 2003, the state

instituted a one and a half percent motel tax for Knight State and that money goes to the tourism bureau that’s called Travel Oregon. Travel Oregon takes a portion of those funds and

Brandon Burton 19:11.022
Mm-hmm.

Shelley Batty 19:23.631
provide seven regional tourism development centers, which ours is Travel Southern Oregon. And so a lot of tourism marketing and how we get the word out travels from Travel Oregon through Travel Southern Oregon. They also provide a lot of grant funding to help us develop those tourism resources and they finance social media influencers and

ton of magazine and newspaper coverage of what’s really going on in all these remote parts of the state. And, you know, we are four hours from the Bend, Central Oregon area. That’s one of those places that has been super discovered and almost overused by tourists. And so they spend a lot of time marketing in that area, what’s going on in Lake County to move those people my direction.

Brandon Burton 20:02.701
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:14.797
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 20:23.872
Okay, that’s helpful. as far as when the tourists do come, is it majority camping? Is there lodging? As far as accommodations go, what do they do? And does that drive any of your funding as well?

Shelley Batty 20:35.29
There is

Shelley Batty 20:38.843
We just.

Shelley Batty 20:42.469
Right. We only have about 150 lodging rooms in the whole county. And then we have well over 500 RV sites that are designated RV locations. But we also have 76 %

Brandon Burton 20:48.75
Okay.

Shelley Batty 21:02.813
Publicly owned land for a service fish and wildlife National Parks service and all of those government agencies because it’s government land so it’s our land allowed dispersed camping you find a beautiful spot and just set up your camp and there you are and So it’s like a market to a very specific

Brandon Burton 21:24.12
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 21:32.665
Tourist groups that are willing to be out on their own Really want the solitude of nature We’ve got a couple places that are you know really As a friend of mine was a bougie ready for that level of tourists But for the most part these are people that really want to get out into nature and really want to experience something that they’re not going to get anywhere else

Brandon Burton 21:49.036
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 21:54.307
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 21:58.971
We don’t have the pool and the cabanas, but you can set up your cot without having to worry about putting a tent around you and look at a sky where you can not only see the Milky Way, you can see the colors of the Milky Way.

Brandon Burton 22:14.766
That’s awesome. You’re selling me, Shelly. You’re selling me.

Shelley Batty 22:18.663
Well, it’s like 75 % of the world never sees the Milky Way. And 95 % of the world, even if they see the Milky, that people that do see the Milky Way, they see this kind of vague light. Whereas we have colors of clouds, of stars, of light. It’s just the pictures that you’ll find on the internet are not filtered. They are not colored. That’s really what the sky looks like.

Brandon Burton 22:36.365
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 22:44.942
That is really cool. So the next question came to mind as you’re talking about being a frontier community. What other challenges do you come across with being a frontier community that you confront and take on as a chamber to overcome these challenges? Or maybe because you are a chamber, the challenges are coming up and there’s uniqueness to that. I think just being a frontier community in general.

presents unique opportunities and challenges. So I’m just, curious about some of other things that you face.

Shelley Batty 23:27.015
We, you know, our big competitor is Amazon or, you know, internet, whatever. And when you only have, you know,

Brandon Burton 23:31.469
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 23:39.421
10 or 15 retail establishments in an entire community, it’s really easy to get sidetracked by, I’ll just go to Amazon, rather than finding out what our local businesses have before you search that direction. And that’s always a trick. It’s really hard getting the word out about things. We have a radio station. We have a weekly newspaper.

Brandon Burton 23:56.141
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 24:08.879
We don’t have a television, anything, even the network televisions you have your regional. There are no stations that cover our region. Even you get on a big like a Portland, it’s the big town in Oregon. You go to a Portland television station and they show the state and they show the state.

Brandon Burton 24:18.973
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 24:32.893
500 miles north of us and we don’t even exist and You know California you come out of San Francisco and they don’t show this wide swath that’s right where we are at so How do you get? Information out to everybody. I have like weekly conversation. I didn’t know that was happening and it’s like

Brandon Burton 24:35.596
Yeah, right.

Shelley Batty 24:58.639
Well, we have it on the radio. We don’t listen to the radio. We have it on the newspaper. We don’t get the newspaper. We have it on Facebook. We don’t do internet. We put up flyers and posters downtown. Well, we don’t shop in town. So, you know, knock on doors. Will you come?

Brandon Burton 25:14.651
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, word of mouth. Everybody just get out. You guys need a podcast. You need a podcast to highlight some of these things. Yeah.

Shelley Batty 25:21.405
word of mouth. You know, it’s like I’ve got, I’ve got a list of everything that I should be doing and that I want to be doing and I need to be doing. But we go back to there’s one of me and there’s 8,000 square miles.

Brandon Burton 25:31.232
Right?

Yeah.

That’s right. That’s right. Keep making the list. At some point, those things will rise to the top that are most important. Well, I wanted to ask for those listening who are interested in taking their chamber up to the next level, what kind of tip or action item might you share with them as they strive towards that goal?

Shelley Batty 25:44.421
you making the list.

Shelley Batty 26:00.125
Think outside the box. A great example that I’m something I’m working on that I never thought I would be working on is the community of Lakeview is like many small communities in real financial straits. And so one of the things that they did was they canceled snow removal. And we’re

Brandon Burton 26:05.24
And.

Shelley Batty 26:28.029
5000 square feet. We sometimes have three feet of Not this year, it’s 55 degrees today. usually there is a huge amount of snow in the summertime. So a group of community members, not the chamber, not the town, just a group of community members got together and decided that they should raise money for snow removal.

Brandon Burton 26:32.194
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 26:38.403
Right.

Shelley Batty 26:52.709
and one of their members named Margo Dodd had just seen the movie Calendar Girls with Helen Murin about a small town in England who did a PG naked calendar to raise money for cancer research. And so they decided to do an Outback Naked Calendar and they got 12 business owners.

Brandon Burton 27:01.646
Okay.

Brandon Burton 27:14.306
Go.

Shelley Batty 27:18.685
and well-known community members to pose for their naked calendar. And the photographs were taken by family members or local photographers who donated their time. And this calendar has gone viral now. It’s… I mean, I’ve…

Brandon Burton 27:25.656
I mean…

Brandon Burton 27:34.88
I did see the calendar on your website. Yeah, I did see that.

Shelley Batty 27:40.399
I’ve talked to CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, the BBC, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal. It’s crazy. And they’ve sent calendars to like 12 countries and 49 of the 50 states and have made 10 times what their goal was to raise money for a basic service that

Brandon Burton 28:01.442
Hahaha!

Shelley Batty 28:10.437
Most parts of the country don’t even think about needing to raise money for snow plowing. So you gotta think outside the box because you never know what’s gonna happen.

Brandon Burton 28:17.504
I love the creativity. Yeah, I love the creativity. Yeah. Yeah, think outside the box, but you know, it also doesn’t hurt to take ideas that somebody else puts out there. So there’s community listening who’s struggling with snow removal funding. Yeah, maybe consider a naked calendar. So.

Shelley Batty 28:25.466
outside the box.

Shelley Batty 28:33.609
Or, you know, what other thing that sounds really silly that, who knows, you know, keep, what is it, throw spaghetti against the wall until something sticks?

Brandon Burton 28:42.894
Yeah.

Brandon Burton 28:47.086
That’s right. Yep. Well, Shelley, I like asking everyone I have on the show, as we look to the future of Chambers of Commerce, how do you see the future of Chambers and their purpose going forward?

Shelley Batty 29:00.018
What?

Shelley Batty 29:04.791
One of the things that I say far more often than I wish I had to was I’m not the county party planner. Prior to my coming on board, people…

Brandon Burton 29:14.659
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 29:19.553
if they wanted a festival or if they wanted a special event or if they wanted another parade, call the chamber. They’ll do it. And you end up spending all of your time playing hostess. And while that’s a lot of fun, and there’s a lot of people that really enjoy doing that, it doesn’t really move business forward.

Brandon Burton 29:32.598
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 29:42.277
the chambers nationally that are really growing and are those that are relevant, that are doing political advocacy and really working for a cause and talking to chamber members about it’s not what

the chamber can do for you or your specific business is what you as a part of the chamber can do for the community. that the community is strong and healthy, then you have people there to support your business and to support what you’re doing. But

Brandon Burton 30:12.791
Yeah.

Shelley Batty 30:25.661
Don’t go backwards and say, you know, everything I do is giving bodies into businesses. Everything I do is building up the community so there are bodies to go into those businesses.

Brandon Burton 30:39.022
Right. I think that’s good perspective and view as well. Shelley, I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information for listeners who may want to reach out and connect and maybe learn more about working in a frontier community and some of the solutions you’ve had to come up with with your creative out of the box thinking. What would be the best way for them to reach out and connect with you?

Shelley Batty 31:07.985
The best way is always through the website. It’s really easy. It’s all about Lake County dot com. The contact information goes directly to my email. I think I even have my cell phone number on the website, but it’s all about Lake County got to come.

Brandon Burton 31:26.1
And when you visit that, you can pick up a naked calendar. So that’s great.

Shelley Batty 31:29.575
Cooke of Anika County and find out about dark skies and hang gliding and mountain biking and all of the other great things that we have going on in Lake County.

Brandon Burton 31:41.324
Right. Well, Shelley, this has been great having you on the podcast. I’ve learned some new things today and some of those unique things that you face there as a Frontier community. And I appreciate you taking the time to be with us and shedding some light, even though you’ve got the darkest skies in the country. Thanks for shedding some light on this today. And I appreciate you being with us.

Shelley Batty 31:58.877
you

Shelley Batty 32:03.847
Well, I thank you for asking me to come on.

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