Every organization we link to: local tourism offices, the state and federal agencies that manage the land, the nonprofits and clubs that keep access open, and the universities doing the research.
Know before you go
- Practical lodging base for riders on the southern trail systems
- The Guyandotte Beauty Trail is the signature hike
What you can do here
The Guyandotte Beauty Trail is the signature hike, running through country Logan County has taken back from coal. The park covers 4,000 acres and hiking is listed year-round. No trail mileage is published, so pick up a map at the park rather than committing to a long day on guesswork.
Local organizations
Riders working the southern Hatfield-McCoy systems use this as a practical base — sleep in the park, trailer out in the morning. The record gives no site count and does not say what hookups exist. Reserve through the state park system and confirm what is open inside the April-to-October window.
Trails here cross 4,000 acres of reclaimed coal ground, which tends to mean old grades and steep regrown slopes rather than built flow. Nothing in the record says which trails allow bikes or how far the network runs. Ask the park office before you unload, particularly if you are staging for the ATV systems nearby.
The machines do not run in the park — Chief Logan is the lodging and the trails, and several Hatfield-McCoy systems sit convenient to it. That makes this a place to sleep and stage rather than a place to ride. Permits, trail assignments and rules come from the Hatfield-McCoy Regional Recreation Authority, not from the park.
Local organizations
A wildlife exhibit operates in the park, but the birding value is the ordinary kind: 4,000 acres of forest regrown over former coal land, listed year-round with a May peak. Nothing about species or hotspots is published for this site. eBird and the park staff will tell you more than the park literature does.
Listed as an activity with no course detail published — no hole count, no layout, no fee. The park's documented draws are the wildlife exhibit, the amphitheatre and the trails, and disc golf sits alongside them unexplained. Check UDisc for the layout, or call the park office before you drive out for a round.
Guides, gear and lodging near Chief Logan State Park
Place-level placement for operators within range of this trailhead, put-in or crag.
List your business hereNearby in the Metro Valley
Kanawha State Forest
9,300 acres of steep, wooded hollow just fifteen minutes from downtown Charleston, with more than 25 miles of trails, a well-known mountain bike network, a swimming pool, campground and some of the best spring warbler birding in the state.
Coal River Water Trail
An organized water trail on the Big Coal, Little Coal and main-stem Coal rivers south of Charleston, with maintained access points, mapped mileages and signage — the product of sustained work by the Coal River Group to turn a working-class industrial river back into a recreation asset.
Beech Fork State Park
A 3,981-acre park around a 720-acre Corps reservoir near Huntington, with one of the largest campgrounds in the state park system, good bass fishing and easy trails.
East Lynn Lake
A 1,005-acre Corps reservoir in Wayne County with a strong bass and crappie fishery, a large wildlife management area around it and very little traffic.
Kanawha Falls
A wide ledge falls at Glen Ferris where the Gauley and New join to form the Kanawha — a well-known bank fishing spot for hybrid striped bass, walleye and catfish, with roadside access and a historic inn across the highway.
Tu-Endie-Wei State Park
The smallest park in the system, at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers in Point Pleasant, marking the 1774 Battle of Point Pleasant.
West Virginia has roughly 1.5 million acres of public land and a handful of places that carry almost all of the attention. The consequence is that a great deal of very good ground sits nearly empty, usually for one of three reasons: nobody has heard of it, the road in is gated or rough, or it is undeveloped and has nothing to advertise. Those are the places below — of them across regions.