“Information connects our past to the present and helps us peer toward the future. The data we collect and analyze and the decisions we reach based on them are the primary determinants of the kinds of lives we and future generations lead.”

– Garry Brewer, Yale University, 1984

When Lord Bryce spoke at Berkeley, California was filled with 2.3 millions of people. Today, there are over 35 millions. In 2000, California’s Gross State Product exceeded $1.3 trillion, more than five times what it was just 25 years earlier.

Yet, as Lord Bryce observed, the day still has only twenty-four hours, and each man still has only one mouth, one pair of ears, and one pair of eyes.

Lord Bryce accurately predicted California’s boom during the 20th century. But as that century came to a close, the boom moved elsewhere. Not to a particular state or region, but to a group of communities across the country, geographically scattered but linked by their beauty and environmental quality. These are America’s Places of Ecological and Aesthetic Significance (PEAS), America’s new boomtowns.

During the 1990s, the population of the 42 largest PEAS counties – counties featuring major resorts or national park gateways – grew 31 percent, over twice as fast as the nation, and faster than any state except Nevada and Arizona. PEAS’s per capita income grew even faster. Why? Because an increasing number of Americans are finding happiness in PEAS communities.

As a non-profit research organization, the purpose of the Charture Institute is to understand and clearly explain the fundamental forces – economic, demographic, social, and environmental – shaping and affecting PEAS communities, and to do so in a fact-based, non-ideological fashion.

Boomtowns are nothing new. But what is different about the boom transforming PEAS communities is that it is based primarily on environment and lifestyle, rather than traditional economic development. As a result, PEAS communities face a unique set of pressures: the growth they enjoy is threatening the very qualities driving that growth. This challenge is made even greater by the pace and magnitude of the changes transforming PEAS, and greater still by an absence of solid information about them. It is this information gap Charture Institute was created to address.

The Charture Institute’s goal is to provide accurate, objective, comprehensive, and comparative data about America’s PEAS. In Charture’s view, the better people understand PEAS, the better the chances of making thoughtful choices about their communities’ futures.

The Charture Institute is based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, one of the most rapidly growing PEAS. Charture is supported through a combination of tax-deductible donations, research grants, and information-based products. Through tools such as research, writing, presentations, and publications (such as this Almanac) Charture’s vision is to be the foremost authority on America’s PEAS communities.