Natural Bridge (Virginia)

Natural Bridge, in Rockbridge County, Virginia, is a stone arch 66 metres high and 27 metres across, spanning a gorge cut by Cedar Creek. It is made of nearly horizontal beds of Ordovician limestone and dolomite, roughly 470 million years old, and is thought to be the last surviving piece of the roof of a cave or underground river tunnel, whose other sections collapsed and eroded away. Standing beneath it, on the creek-side path, the scale is startling, all the more so because a public highway runs across the top.

For the Monacan people the bridge was a sacred place, linked in tradition to a victory over pursuing enemies. In 1742 an exploring party sent by Virginia's governor followed Cedar Creek through the arch, and in the following decades it became one of the celebrated wonders of the New World. Local lore says George Washington surveyed it as a young man and carved his initials in the rock; the initials "G.W." are still pointed out on the wall of the arch. Thomas Jefferson bought 157 acres including the bridge in 1774, called it "the most Sublime of nature's works", built a log cabin here and surveyed it himself in 1802. Artists painted it, Herman Melville compared the arched back of Moby-Dick to it, and the poet William Cullen Bryant ranked it with Niagara as the two most remarkable natural features of North America.

The bridge passed through many private owners and grew into a resort, with hotels and, from 1927, floodlighting switched on by President Coolidge. In 2016 it became Natural Bridge State Park, managed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The trail beneath the arch follows Cedar Creek upstream to the Lost River, where water issues from the side of the gorge, and on to the 9-metre Lace Falls.

Getting there

Natural Bridge is in Rockbridge County, about 41 km from Lynchburg. The nearest airport is Lynchburg Regional Airport (LYH), about 45 km away. U.S. Route 11 crosses the top of the arch, but the bridge is best seen from below, from the park trail.