Did you know that there’s a national park about four hours south of Pittsburgh — Yellowstone or Yosemite — that kind of national park?
Does West Virginia even know there’s a national park there?
This isn’t intended as a slight or slander — but, rather, amazement that New River Gorge National Park & Preserve really hasn’t been commercialized yet. (At Yellowstone, if they could somehow slap a logo of Old Faithful on Old Faithful itself and sell you a handful of scalding steam, they would). There’s way more signage for various Manchin family enterprises than this new national park, even when you’re only a few miles from the entrance.
And that’s … kind of great? The National Parks Service, in general, does a solid job of preserving, protecting, and promoting America’s most picturesque places. But tourism is big business, and a national park is up there with beaches and Disney properties as the kind of trip-worthy attraction every region wants. So, for now, you can expect to enjoy this fairly wild 70,000+ acres of verdant, riverine splendor without much of the attendant tourism infrastructure that usually accumulates around a national park. Someday, sure, you’ll be able to buy that River Gorge-branded piece of coal that plays “Country Roads” when you pick it up in the gift shop, but not just yet.
The New River Gorge was given National Park Service protection in 1978 as a national river, and was expanded to New River Gorge National Park & Preserve — this country’s newest national park — in the plague year of 2020 courtesy of legislation drafted by Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito. But there’s nothing “new” about it. The New River itself is by some measures one of the oldest rivers in the world, possibly more than 360 million years old.
It cuts a winding path through the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina and combines with the Gauley River in West Virginia to form the Kanawha River — which eventually flows into the Ohio.
While looking down from a mountaintop into the New River’s steep valleys of unending green, it looks like you’re staring into the Forest Primeval. Here, in this remote and forbidding country that has always been relatively undeveloped, it feels like the wildness of the frontier never truly died out. It’s a stubborn land that seceded from the secessionists before the Civil War, breaking apart from the slave-owning gentry of Virginia to become West Virginia, in a moment of ornery righteousness that should really be better known.
However, during a July visit with my wife and son, a ranger pointed out that this particular dense canopy of green was not old-growth forest. In the early 20th century, most of the valley below was denuded of trees to feed the sawmills and reinforce the coal mines that lined the New River. That’s kind of astounding, because now, it looks like a lush rainforest unbroken by as much as a road or a single house — a feeling reinforced by the humid, swampy southern-style heat.
Unusually for a national park, a man-made structure is among the most essential things to see here. The New River Gorge Bridge turned what was once a 40-minute drive full of horrifying hairpin turns along narrow mountain roads into a leisurely one-minute cruise. But it also created a structural work of precision and striking elegance — the longest steel span in the Western hemisphere and the third highest in the United States, completed in 1977.
Of course, this bridge is most famous for Bridge Day, the one day of the year when you’re allowed to — encouraged, actually — to jump off the bridge. BASE jumpers with parachutes leap off the side of the span and fall to the bottom. The event draws as many as 140,000 spectators, and will be on Oct. 21 this year.
But for every other day of the year, there’s a series of steps and viewing platforms that go far down into the canyon below the bridge. The Canyon Rim Overlook offers views from bridge-level, and below at arch-level. The Fayette Station Bridge at the very bottom of the Gorge offers another great view, from below.
If you’re feeling a bit more adventurous, there’s the Bridge Walk, which lets you walk underneath the bridge, on a mile-long catwalk, 851 feet above the churning bends of the New River. Obviously, those afraid of heights should keep their distance. If you’re feeling really adventurous, there’s a Biplane Ride with the Wild Blue Adventure Co., which employs a World War II-era Stearman biplane (two sets of wings, open cockpit). If I ever have the option, I’m doing a barrel roll through an autumnal New River Gorge aflame with color.
New River Gorge has its own ghost town deep inside the park. Once, Thurmond was a rich boomtown, whose railroad saw 75,000 passengers a year. Now, it sees exactly none, though the park has put some work into preserving what remains. Thurmond offers a fascinating glimpse into the hardscrabble life of a hundred years past. Its sheer remoteness and the abruptness of its demise — which coincided with the Great Depression — left it curiously intact. The train station, banks and railroad infrastructure that once served thousands, now sit eerily silent.
Another essential stop is the Grandview overlook, 1,400 feet above the river. Here, you can see above the low-rise mountains that make this region so resistant to neat little grids and orderly intersections. It has several of the best hiking trails, accessible to varying skill levels.
Sandstone Falls is the park’s most picturesque waterfall, and is near the isolated mountain town of Hinton. Hinton doesn’t have room between the rivers and the hills for strip mall parking lots, so it retains a sleepy, but well-preserved downtown. There’s a nice café — the charming Market on Courthouse Square — and exactly one touristy gift shop/coffee shop, Otter & Oak.
The New River has been known for whitewater rafting for decades, and is one of the best spots for it east of the Mississippi. The upper section (the southern part — the river unusually flows south to north) is relatively tranquil, wider, and moves a bit slower (up to Class III rapids). The Lower Gorge (the northern section of the river) is where it gets really hairy, with bigger (Class III-V) rapids with lots of protruding boulders and obstacles.
This is obviously great country for mountain biking, with some dedicated infrastructure for it. The relatively easy, 13-mile Arrowhead Trails are a good place to start, and bike rentals are available, but there are other trails of ascending grades and difficulty. Trail information is here.
It’s also a major destination for mountain climbing. Though you’ll find no snowy peaks to ascend here, there are enough challenging sandstone cliffs to keep most skill levels engaged. There are more than 1,400 established climbing sites in the park.
A great way to end a trip is by taking a sunset boat trip down the New River via Adventures on the Gorge, as the dark Appalachian night gradually descends on the park.