Geographical Perspectives On Sustainable Rural Change /447 Chapter 25 Looking East for the New West? Characterizing Rural Change in Adams County, Pennsylvania Randall K. Wilson, Alexandra Bigler and Thomas W. Crawford Since the 1990s literature on the 'New West' has underscored distinctive regional characteristics of rural -change within the United States. Driven by the decline of traditional resource-extraction industries, the corresponding rise of service sector economies, and the influx of migrants drawn to amenity rich environments, researchers have charted the regional implications of the New West transformations upon western landscapes and land uses, public land management priorities, and the character of rural communities. This chapter traces a similar dynamics in Adams County, Pennsylvania, a decidedly non-western place located in the Mid-Adantic region, and suggests a broader basis than the New West for this form of rural change. It seems the New West is alive and well. For students of rural change in the western United States, the stories in local papers over the past decade have been all too familiar. Traditional local economies, landscapes and cultural values - all historically tied to primary sector agricultural production - continue to recede in the face of new industries, land use priorities, and development initiatives fueled by rapid in-migration. The new economies include service sector businesses often based on tourism, recreational activities or real estate development. These industries, in turn, render changes in local landscapes, as farm fields, orchards and pastures give way to new exurban residential developments, convention centers and oudet malls. Meanwhile, the amenity migrants usher in new ideas concerning the way local landscapes and communities should be shaped and valued, ideas which are often in tension with those held by long time local residents. In response to these transformations, the news media document an increasing number and frequency of conflicts over land use: grassroots oppositions groups and local governments facing off against out of state land developers; struggles .over proposals to bring legalized gambling to the local communities; and tensions over public land management practices on nearby national parks. Again, each of these processes of rural change, including their resultant local impacts and responses, clearly mirror the characteristics identified by many commentators as New West transformation (Beyers & Nelson, 2000; Nelson, 2001; Power, 1996; Rasker, 1994; Riebsame, Robb, Limerick & Wilkinson, 1997; Travis, 2006). However, this is precisely where the news stories present an interesting twist. For rather than describing a community in western Wyoming or New Mexico, the place in which each of these headlines were recendy made is Adams County, located in south-central Pennsylvania. It short, it is not the Intermountain West about which we speak, but the Mid-Adantic region; not the New West, but the New East. These initial observations raise a number of questions regarding the regional nature of rural change. For one, is the New West, both in terms of the underlying dynamics