Community First: Jed Smith on Motorsports, Mapped Routes, and the Roads West Virginia Keeps Undervaluing

Jed Smith grew up in Monroe County, West Virginia — no traffic lights, a motocross track in the front yard, parents who were happiest in the woods regardless of what they were driving or paddling. He came back to the state after years in the military, the shooting sports world, and a stretch in Reno, bought a Jeep, and started doing guided off-road tours out of a newly formed LLC during COVID. He didn’t make a lot of money. He had a lot of fun. That combination is pretty much how Back Roads of Appalachia found him.

Jed now serves as director of operations for Back Roads of Appalachia and project manager for the Appalachian Overland Triangle — two connected organizations that have built more than 4,500 miles of mapped routes across the region and put together one of the more active events calendars in Appalachian motorsports tourism. The routes span West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia, ranging from paved sports car and cruiser motorcycle loops to unpaved dual-sport and overland tracks. The economic numbers behind them are real: in 2024, the organizations tracked roughly $40 million in economic impact in West Virginia alone, and $50 million in Kentucky. A recently awarded $8 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission’s ARISE program — covering Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia — is set to expand the overland and adventure travel infrastructure further.

One of Jed’s signature projects is the 24 Hours of Appalachia, an endurance overland navigation challenge that has raised nearly $250,000 across three seasons for regional nonprofits and charities. The event is also, practically speaking, a proof of concept: every time it runs through Hinton or another small community in the region, restaurants fill up, locals come out, and — as Jed tells it — every year more people approach him just to say they’re glad he came back. The community-first framing isn’t marketing language for him. It’s operational policy.

His message to legislators and landowners is consistent: the roads people in Appalachia complain about — too curvy, too remote, too rough — are exactly what people are driving hours to find. The guy in the six-figure Porsche GT3 and the overlander sleeping out of a 4Runner want the same thing. They want to feel wild. They want roads that haven’t been smoothed into something forgettable. West Virginia has more of those roads than almost anywhere in the eastern United States, and most of the communities they run through haven’t figured out yet that they’re sitting on an asset.

Jed Smith and the Back Roads of Appalachia team can be found at backroadsofappalachia.org. Route files from the 24 Hours of Appalachia are publicly available via their Google Drive. Follow along for events, routes, and media across the region.