New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
American national park and nature preserve / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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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 | |
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IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape) | |
Location | Fayette, and Summers counties, West Virginia, United States |
Nearest city | Fayetteville, West Virginia |
Coordinates | 37°57′39″N 81°4′54″W |
Area | 72,808 acres (294.64 km2)[1] |
Established | November 10, 1978, as a national river December 27, 2020, as a national park |
Visitors | 1,593,523 (in 2022)[2] |
Governing body | National Park Service |
Website | New River Gorge National Park and Preserve |
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.