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.
Pinnacle Rock State Park
A small day-use park in Mercer County built around a jagged sandstone fin standing above the highway, with a stairway to the top and a view over the southern coalfields. Jimmy Lewis Lake below offers small-water fishing.
Know before you go
- Day use only, no camping
- The stair climb to the pinnacle is short but steep
What you can do here
The walk that matters is the stairway up the sandstone fin: short, steep, and finished with a view over the southern coalfields from 3,100 feet. Around it lie 400 acres of day-use park and Jimmy Lewis Lake below. Nothing longer is published, so plan this as a stop rather than a full day of hiking.
Local organizations
A jagged sandstone fin standing above the highway, reached by a short stair climb, gives you a working overlook of the coalfields at 3,100 feet. Valley fog in the morning and hardwood color in fall are the obvious reasons to time a trip. The park is day use only, so check closing hours before planning on last light.
Local organizations
Outdoor Photography across West Virginia →Jimmy Lewis Lake sits below the rock and offers small-water fishing. With 400 acres of day-use park and no camping, this suits an afternoon rather than a dawn-to-dark session. Nothing about species or stocking is published for the lake, so check state licensing and any park rules before you set up on the bank.
Local organizations
Guides, gear and lodging near Pinnacle Rock State Park
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.
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.