New River Gorge

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve lies in south-eastern West Virginia, in the heart of the Appalachians, south-east of Charleston. It protects more than 70,000 acres along some 85 kilometres of river set in a canyon whose sandstone walls reach three hundred metres in height.

The area had been under National Park Service management since 1978, when President Jimmy Carter declared it the New River Gorge National River. On 27 December 2020 it was redesignated a national park and preserve, as part of the stimulus package approved during the pandemic, becoming the country's sixty-third national park and the most recent in the system.

Despite its name, the New River is one of the oldest rivers on the continent and probably in the world: it flows northwards, cutting across the Appalachian ranges, which indicates that it already existed before the mountains rose around it. Its rapids of up to class V and the sandstone walls of the canyon have made the area an international destination for rafting and climbing. The New River Gorge Bridge, one of the longest steel arches in the world, crosses the canyon and is the setting for Bridge Day. The park also preserves notable industrial heritage, with the remains of the coal mining towns that occupied the canyon floor between the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century.