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New River Gorge National Park

A new designation for an old river

By Scott Richardson

May 22^nd, 2021

I felt bad rolling into my campsite at midnight and disturbing other campers with the noise of setting up my tent. Bright stars entertained me throughout the last few hours of my seven-hour drive to West Virginia, so I skipped the turn to camp and headed straight down to the river to scout out the stars.

The last time I visited the New River was 15 years prior, and only as a quick day trip while visiting family in Kentucky. Its recent redesignation as a national park brought me back. I had no idea where to go, what view I could expect, or what obstacles might get in my way. I chose to station myself on a bridge to get an unobstructed view of the river and stars above.

After an hour, the milky way started to emerge above the walls of the gorge, reflecting off the river and dimly illustrating the scene in front of me.

After a few hours of stargazing, I headed back to the car to realize I left my windows open to any wildlife looking for a snack. Luckily, no opportunistic raccoons were waiting for me in the passenger seat.

I finally rolled into camp around 2 am and slept in the car to avoid any unnecessary noise.

The next morning, I woke up early and headed back to the gorge to explore. Bright pink rhododendrons decorated the forest, adding a pop of colors to the monotony of the green forest. Rocky outcrops led to beautiful vantage points to the river below.

At one time industry dominated the gorge. Freight trains ran continuously to bring coal and it’s by-product coke out of the gorge and to industrial centers that would use it for iron and steel production. Remnants of some of the mines are persevered within the gorge today, and trains still run regularly along the river.

Perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the New River Gorge isn’t the gorge itself or its industrial remnants, but the bridge that crosses it. Prior to the mid-1970s, the only option to cross the gorge was on a low-slung bridge at the bottom of the gorge. It took drivers 40-minutes to traverse a windy, 8 mile road that brought them to the river, then back up on the other side.

After 3 years of construction, the New River Gorge Bridge became the longest steel arch bridge in the western hemisphere, shuttling drivers 1,700 feet across the gorge, and 876 feet above the river.

Thurmond once served as an important railroad town shuttling passengers into the gorge, and bringing coal out of it. The town thrived until around the Great Depression when roads improved, automobiles became the preferred method of transportation, and steam locomotives were replaced with diesel which the town was not setup to service.

Today, the old train depot has been restored, and several houses and buildings survive to help tell the story of the gorge’s industrial and tourism history.

Once I crossed the bridge coming out of Thurmond, I had two options to drive to my next stop at Glade Creek: I could backtrack to Glen Jean and take the well-maintained road, or cross the river onto the tinier line on the map that followed the river, McKendree Road. I chose the latter and set off on the packed gravel road.

McKendree Road follows the river 13 miles from Thurmond down to Prince, WV. It starts as pavement, turns into gravel just after the Stone Cliff Bridge, then devolves into a narrow, windy, obstacle-laden 4x4 trail as you pass Thayer about five miles in. Unfortunately at that point, unless your vehicle has a good turning radius (mine does not), you’re basically stuck continuing on as the road turns sketchier. While boulders might line the road on one side, there may be a sharp drop off into the woods on the other. The narrow road is open to two-way traffic, so while you’re carefully navigating around down tree limbs and over rocks, a much better-suited truck may come speeding at you out of nowhere, and you’ll be forced to find a way to avoid a collision. In my case, I pulled 2 tires off the road, and a 4Runner stopped to tell me I’d almost put my front-end into a stump hidden in the overgrown brush. Around mile 8 (of 13 miles), I started to follow a thin line of fluid, and finally found the culprit, a Pontiac G6 who sat disabled one mile from the trail’s exit. The car suffered underbody damage and hoped their tow truck could locate them along this primitive road.

Once I made it to the Prince side of McKendree Road, it was still another 6 miles of narrow, gravel road to the Glade Creek trailhead. This area was peaceful as water cascaded down the creek along the trail.

I returned to the Endless Wall hoping to catch a colorful sunset. Unfortunately, clouds rolled in and diffused any late-day magic. The sun managed to peek out every once in a while, painting the gorge and accentuating its crevices.

The next day I woke up to rain, packed up camp and hit the road. I put on my raincoat and hiked around the Grandview section of the park. One of my favorite trails was short Castle Rock Trail which starts with a wide vista of the river at Grandview, then dips below towering walls of exposed rock. Then I liked up with the Turkey Spur trail and walked along the gorge to it’s end.

The newly designated New River Gorge National Park became the 42nd park I’ve visited in my quest to see all of America’s national parks. I first visited in 1999 on a whitewater rafting trip while at a Boy Scout camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and made a short return visit a few years later.