Drawn by the meandering and mighty Missouri River, the 225-mile-long Katy Trail – the longest in the United States – and the quirky and scenic river town of Rocheport, Missouri, located just fifteen minutes outside Columbia, Brett Dufur and his wife Tawnee have crafted a diversified livelihood based on preserving, featuring and interpreting those very qualities that first attracted them to the area. They’ve adopted and promoted ecotourism – long before it became a mainstream buzzword – through their varied enterprises that include a regional publishing house, family-friendly bed and breakfast and a guided canoe rental operation. In a world teased by globalization, the triad of businesses owned by the Dufurs prove that true dividends stay local and sustain communities.

Already in its 8th edition, the Katy Trail Guidebook penned by Brett before he graduated from college continues to be a best seller for Pebble Publishing, the Missouri-focused regional publishing house he ended up starting in 1995 because he recognized a need and receptive audience. “It made sense to do a guidebook for the longest rail-to-trail in the country,” explains Brett, who grew up a mile from the mall in suburban Kansas City, Missouri. “In Journalism School at the University of Missouri-Columbia I had numerous study abroad
opportunities. I spent time in Mexico and Costa Rica as a part of my coursework, so I understood the value of a good guidebook.”

“But the Katy Trail is not one where anyone is going to get lost, since the trail is fairly straight and flat,” continues Brett with a smile. “What I discovered is that people are hungry for the opportunity to connect with a sense of place, and that’s what this guidebook is all about. I also realized that nature-based travel was waiting to be discovered in our backyard in Missouri. We could embrace nature rather than paving it.” His Katy Trail Guidebook is a history book with
directions on how to experience river town life, culture, history and recreation. It’s this same principled foundation – sustaining the authentic sense of place – that has served him well when later, joined by his wife, they started the Katy Trail Bed and Bikefest, purchasing it in 2004 from an existing owner, as well as launching the Mighty Mo Canoe Rental featuring interpretive floats by canoe or kayak
on the Missouri River.

“When I first started working out of a house on the bluff overlooking Rocheport, being self-employed was like tumbling down a big hill,” admits Brett. “I welcomed the challenges and recognized early on that no one else was doing what I was doing. Boxes of books lined the walls and served as chairs. I didn’t even know what a P&L statement was until several years later.” His popular Katy Trail Guide was followed by The Best of Missouri Hands, a book featuring traditional craft artisans from around the state. It’s through one booksigning with an artist that Brett met Tawnee, a featured artist’s daughter, for the first time. Not long after The Best of Missouri Hands came out, the publishing business started to take off with other authors approaching Pebble Publishing with niche audience regional books. In 2000, Pebble Publishing solidified its niche of providing quality Missouri books by acquiring Missouri Gold Booksellers, a distributor of over 500 other Missouri books.

By 2002, the small publishing house had indeed created ripples in the Missouri publishing scene, with twelve titles plus the titles sold through Missouri Gold Booksellers. That same year, Pebble Publishing moved into a charming old brick 1917 gas station building, transforming it into an attractive retail store, publishing house and book warehouse. The bookstore complemented the thriving town filled with gourmet restaurants, winery, artist studios and numerous other small businesses serving cyclists and vacationers. “The best part of the whole move is when cyclists from the Katy Trail stop by the store,” chimes in Brett. “The retail storefront brought years of work full circle and allowed us to directly connect with the people who enjoyed our books.” Pebble Publishing currently hires as many as five part-time employees and three full time staff, depending on needs.

Again, drawn by their perceptive abilities to identify market needs, Brett and Tawnee – who had just completed her degree in natural resources management from University of Missouri at the time – focused their talents and figure out a way for Tawnee to put her degree to work without leaving town. In 2004, they opened up the Katy Trail Bed & Bikefest located within a stones throw of the trail and became the only family-friendly place in town for trail users and with an eye toward having minimal environmental impacts. “We set out on our journey to make the place as energy efficient and green as possible,” shares Brett. “And we wanted to prove that most of the changes we made were done with $15 or less.”

With four rooms that can sleep as many as sixteen people and split between two buildings built in the 1880s, the Katy Trail Bed & Bikefest features numerous energy saving and water conserving renovations, including Energy Star appliances, compact fluorescent lighting, improved insulation made with recycled content material, new storm windows, lots of caulking, a high efficiency furnace, low flow faucets, showers and toilets, with more improvements on the way.

“We were very inspired by Lisa Kivirist and John Ivanko’s book Rural Renaissance,” shares Tawnee. “They really opened our eyes to the huge wonderful possibilities and got us pumped up. Some of the personal anecdotes they shared really made us realize that we didn’t have to create some cookie-cutter B&B that was all antiques and quilts. Their experiences helped us realize that you can be yourself, make your place your own, and have it reflect your values, and that people will appreciate it for what it is.”

Tawnee is quick to point out that raising two young children and running a B&B is more than a handful. Lots of good help has arrived from friends happy to find laid back, flexible part-time jobs close by. “Fortunately for the guests, we don’t live at the B&B,” continues Tawnee with a smile. “We live a couple of blocks away. Our guests have been very into our pursuit of going green, and they really enjoy meeting our kids. A lot of our guests have really become friends, and they come visit year after year. They want to hear all about everything that’s going on. It’s like we’ve become part of a much bigger family.”

While Tawnee tends to the B&Bs guests, Brett and several other part-time guides ply the waters of the Missouri River on the weekends to provide up-close-and-personal perspective of the river, its history and ecological wonders through Mighty Mo Canoe Rentals. “You can’t say you’ve done the Lewis & Clark Trail if you haven’t got your feet wet,” writes Brett in Exploring Lewis & Clark’s Missouri, also from Pebble Publishing. “That trail is the Missouri River.” He envisions, through both his books and floats, creating positive experiences for travelers and visitors that lead them to become livelong stewards of the river.

“Computers and the Internet are my silent business partners,” jokes Brett, admitting that the computers and the Internet make working rural possible. “My typical customer has never been to Rocheport or on the Missouri River. Some can barely remember learning about Lewis and Clark in elementary school. So the Internet has been a powerful tool to get the word out to those interested in ecotourism and heritage travel.”

Brett also believes that democracy is not a spectator sport, so he serves the 208 citizens of Rocheport as their mayor. Recognizing the value of forming partnerships, he helped make headway on creating a boat access point for the Missouri River. “We seem to only hear about the Missouri River when it’s reaching flood stage, yet two-thirds of the residents in the state live within a fifteen minute drive of the river. Our hope is to help people pay more attention to this natural resource, caring and protecting it for many generations to come,” adds Brett.

True to Brett and Tawnee’s values, their diversified entrepreneurial endeavors reflect their passion for expressing their creativity and put into practice their stewardship of nature and nourishment of the community. “To be viable in a rural community, we need to diversify within a niche.”

From the guidebooks and Mighty Mo Canoe floats to the family-focused B&B, the Dufurs have followed their penchant for helping others enjoy the outdoors while helping preserve it.

Tunneling those passions into their businesses has been a lot like creating a garden, Brett says. “We’ve been sowing for a long time now, and our ‘garden’ is starting to create abundance for us. As long as you’re feeling a sense of abundance along your livelihood journey,” concludes Brett in his good-natured and upbeat exuberance, “you’re doing okay. I look at success from the perspective of the three “I”s: identity, working at what you truly want to be;
interactions, meeting lots of interesting people; and income, to pay the bills and provide enough to reinvest in my family and the business. It’s all about keeping our money working locally in entrepreneurial endeavors that create abundance for us and others in our community.”