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
- Historic buildings are open seasonally
- Trails are short and suited to families
What you can do here
Trails here are short and suited to families, running through quiet woodland on a 532-acre Harrison County park. What they connect to is the draw: a preserved nineteenth-century homestead with farm buildings and a museum, on ground settled in 1796. Call it an hour or two of walking just off I-79 rather than a day's objective.
The homestead is the subject — preserved nineteenth-century farm buildings and a museum on a site settled in 1796. Those buildings are open seasonally, so check before planning around interiors. The woodland trails give you the surrounding cover, and the park is small enough that you can work the same light from several angles without much walking.
Camping is listed at this 532-acre park, but no campground size, site types or loop names are published here. Easy access from I-79 makes it a plausible overnight stop rather than a destination in itself. Confirm with the state park system that the campground is open in the season you want and what it actually offers before you count on a site.
Quiet woodland trails and the open ground around the historic farm buildings make for edge habitat you can cover on foot in a morning, all inside 532 acres. May is the peak month statewide. No species list is published for this park, so treat it as a low-effort stop worth an hour rather than a target you drive for.
Guides, gear and lodging near Watters Smith Memorial State Park
Place-level placement for operators within range of this trailhead, put-in or crag.
List your business hereNearby in the Mountain Lakes
Elk River
One of the finest and least-known trout fisheries in the Appalachians.
Elk River Rail Trail
A developing rail-trail on the former Buffalo Creek & Gauley and Elk River Railroad grades, opening a long, remote corridor along the Elk between Gassaway and Clendenin.
Stonewall Jackson Lake State Park
A 2,650-acre lake with the most developed resort facilities of any West Virginia lake park — a lodge, marina, Arnold Palmer golf course and the state's largest open-water fetch for small-boat sailing.
Sutton Lake
A 1,440-acre Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Elk River in Braxton County, with several campgrounds, quiet coves and the dam that creates the Elk tailwater fishery below.
Burnsville Lake
A 968-acre Corps reservoir on the Little Kanawha with the Bulltown Historic Area on its shore — Civil War earthworks, a preserved farmstead and a well-regarded campground.
Holly River State Park
West Virginia's second-largest state park at 8,101 acres, in a narrow valley of hemlock and hardwood with waterfalls, cabins and a rugged trail network.
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.