New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
Designated a national park and preserve in 2020, protecting roughly 53 miles of the New River where it has cut about 1,000 feet through Nuttall sandstone. There is no single entrance and no loop road — the park is assembled from separate access points that can be forty minutes apart, from Canyon Rim beside the bridge to Grandview in the south and the coal towns down on the river.
Know before you go
- Mapping apps misroute in the gorge — the Park Service says so on its own pages, so carry the official map
- Canyon Rim for the bridge, Grandview for the rim, Thurmond and Nuttallburg for the coal history
- No entrance fee, though campgrounds and commercial rafting are priced separately
What you can do here
Hiking
Sport Climbing
Traditional Climbing
Whitewater Rafting
Whitewater Kayaking
Mountain Biking
Fishing
Camping
Outdoor Photography
Guides, gear and lodging near New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
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.
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.