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.
Kaymoor Miners Trail
A steep descent from the gorge rim to the ruins of the Kaymoor One coal mine and processing plant, including 821 wooden steps down the former haulage incline. The return climb is the difficult part. The mine operated from 1900 to 1962 and the surviving structures are among the more complete industrial remains in the gorge.
Know before you go
- Budget twice as long for the climb out as the descent
- The Kaymoor Trail along the bench connects to Fayette Station for a longer loop
- Mine ruins are unstable — stay on the trail
What you can do here
Two miles round trip from the rim down to the Kaymoor One mine ruins, including 821 wooden steps on the old haulage incline. Budget twice as long for the climb out as for the descent — that is the real work of this trail. The ruins are unstable, so stay on the trail. The bench trail connects to Fayette Station for a longer loop.
Local organizations
The Kaymoor One mine and plant ran from 1900 to 1962, and what survives is among the more complete industrial remains in the gorge. Shoot from the trail: the structures are unstable and not something to climb into. Two miles round trip, with 821 wooden steps between the rim and the bottom.
Local organizations
Outdoor Photography across West Virginia →With 821 steps down and the same 821 back up, this reads as a stair workout more than a trail run over its two-mile round trip. The climb out takes roughly twice the descent, so treat the bottom as halfway in time rather than distance. The bench trail toward Fayette Station gives you runnable ground if you want more.
Local organizations
Guides, gear and lodging near Kaymoor Miners Trail
Place-level placement for operators within range of this trailhead, put-in or crag.
List your business hereNearby in the New River Gorge
New River Gorge Bridge
A 3,030-foot steel arch carrying US 19 some 876 feet above the New River — for decades the longest single-span arch bridge in the world, and still the image most people carry of West Virginia.
Endless Wall Trail
A 2.4-mile point-to-point trail along the gorge rim through hemlock and rhododendron, crossing Fern Creek on a footbridge and reaching Diamond Point, an exposed rock outcrop with a view up the gorge to the bridge.
Long Point Trail
About 3.2 miles round trip on mostly level old roadbed to a rock promontory below the rim, which provides the most-photographed view of the New River Gorge Bridge.
Grandview
1,400 feet above a horseshoe bend in the New, with a seven-mile view up the gorge — the widest perspective anywhere in the park.
Sandstone Falls
The largest waterfall on the New River — not tall, but 1,500 feet wide, spilling across the full breadth of the river between islands at the point where the gorge begins to open.
Nuttallburg
An abandoned coal town at the bottom of the gorge with the most complete surviving coal conveyor and tipple complex in the country — a 1,385-foot inclined conveyor running straight up the hillside, once operated by Henry Ford.
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.