New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is a unit of the United States National Park Service (NPS) designed to protect and maintain the New River Gorge in southern West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. Established in 1978 as a national river and redesignated in 2020, the park and preserve stretches for 53 miles (85 km) from just downstream of Hinton to Hawks Nest State Park near Ansted.[1]
New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
Fayette, and Summers counties, West Virginia, United States
72,808 acres (294.64 km2)[1]
November 10, 1978, as a national river
December 27, 2020, as a national park
1,593,523 (in 2022)[2]
The park is rich in cultural and natural history and offers an abundance of scenic and recreational opportunities. New River Gorge has some of the country's best whitewater rafting, mainly from the Cunard put-in to the Fayette Station take-out,[3] and is also one of the most popular climbing areas on the East Coast. The New River itself originates in North Carolina, flowing north through Virginia into the West Virginia mountains to the Kanawha River which continues to the Ohio River.
History[edit]
President Jimmy Carter signed legislation establishing New River Gorge National River on November 10, 1978 (Pub. L. 95–625). As stated in the legislation, the park was established as a unit of the national park system "for the purpose of conserving and interpreting outstanding natural, scenic, and historic values and objects in and around the New River Gorge, and preserving as a free-flowing stream an important segment of the New River in West Virginia for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations."
The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve Designation Act[4][5] was incorporated into the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 27, 2020, changing the designation to New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.[6] Less than 10% of the original national river (7,021 acres (28.4 km2)[7]) was redesignated as a national park, where hunting is no longer permitted, while the remainder (65,165 acres (263.71 km2)) is a national preserve with little change.[8][9]
Aquatic life[edit]
The waters of the New River system contain a mosaic of hydrologic features and aquatic habitats that support a unique aquatic ecosystem and nourish a riparian zone that supports rare plants, animals, and communities. The waters provide a surprising variety and density of riverine hydrologic features and processes unparalleled in the Eastern United States, including pools, backwaters, glides, runs, shoals, riffles, torrents, cascades, chutes, rapids and waterfalls.
The river is a highly productive aquatic ecosystem that includes distinct populations of native fish (many found nowhere else), mussels, crayfish, and a broad array of other aquatic life, including rare amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. The riparian zone is the most biologically diverse part of the park, and contains globally rare communities and essential habitat for several rare species. The New River is a dynamic aquatic ecosystem that supports smallmouth bass and other game fish, invertebrates, and aquatic plants.
Diverse flora and fauna[edit]
New River Gorge National Park and Preserve lies at the core of a globally significant forest containing the most diverse flora of any river gorge in central and southern Appalachia; it provides essential habitat for endangered mammals and rare birds and amphibians. The park contains habitats of continuous forest, cliff and rimrock, forest seeps and wetlands, mature bottomland forests, abandoned mine portals (providing a refuge for rare species, including bats, amphibians, and the Allegheny woodrat, a species of special concern in West Virginia and in decline throughout the eastern United States). New River Gorge offers shelter to at least 63 species of mammals including the endangered Virginia big-eared and Indiana bats. The river, stream tributaries, and forest provide habitat for 48 known species of amphibians, including the endangered eastern hellbender, black-bellied salamander, and cave salamander.
Diverse populations of birds such as wood warblers, vireos, and thrushes spend part of their lives in the tropics, but depend upon the unfragmented forests of the New River Gorge for breeding. The region is a vital link in the north-south migratory flyway. Each year, thousands of hawks fly across the region during the fall migratory season. The NPS and West Virginia Department of Natural Resources have initiated a multiyear program to restore peregrine falcons to New River Gorge. They soar and dive near the cliffs.
Forty different plant communities containing at least 1,342 species and 54 rare plants have been identified in the gorge.
Human settlements[edit]
There are historically significant abandoned places, some in ruins and some stabilized and rehabilitated, where people worked and lived during the late 18th and 19th centuries, supplying the coal from the New River Coalfield, and lumber that helped fuel American industry. Remnants of the park's past, hidden in the forest, tell the stories of earlier life in the Appalachian Mountains. On display are the tangible remains of historic coal mining structures and coke ovens — such as at Nuttallburg Coal Mining Complex and Town Historic District and Kay Moor — and the historic structures and ruins associated with more than 50 company-owned towns.[10]
The New River Gorge region was opened up to the outside world in 1873 with the coming of the railroad. In the park, there are old railroad depots, rail yards, rail grades, steel and timber trestle bridges, railroad equipment, archeological sites and associated towns, like Thurmond, that were developed to support the railroad. The history and archeology associated with the lumbering industry can be seen in the ruins of old towns like Hamlet. Also contributing to the area's cultural history are surviving examples of subsistence farms, former community sites, homesteads, and other places in the park where the ancestors of families long associated with the New River lived and worked.
Historic Bank of Glen Jean near the park headquarters
Sandstone Falls from the boardwalk
Sandstone Visitor Center near the south end of the park
Henderson Falls along Fayette Station Road
