New River Gorge Bridge
Interesting facts
- The first person to jump from the bridge was a coal-mine foreman, Burton Ervin, who leapt with an ordinary parachute on 1 August 1979.
- On an ordinary day about 16,200 vehicles cross the bridge.
- It was the largest project the West Virginia Department of Highways had ever undertaken, with the federal government paying 70 percent.
- Even today it remains the third-highest vehicular bridge in the United States.
- Its national park is unusual in having a man-made structure, the bridge, as its main feature rather than a natural wonder.
- In 1978, a year after the bridge opened, Congress protected the river as a national river after a debate over building resorts along the gorge.
- The bridge appears as a location in the video game Fallout 76 and in the 2002 action film Steal.
Why it is worth it
A single steel arch, rust-brown against the forested walls of an Appalachian canyon, carries four lanes of highway 876 feet (267 metres) above the New River in West Virginia. The New River Gorge Bridge is 3,030 feet (924 metres) long, and its arch spans 1,700 feet (518 metres). When it opened in 1977 it was both the longest single-span arch in the world, a record it kept for 26 years, and the highest bridge anywhere carrying a regular road, until the Liuguanghe Bridge in China opened in 2001. It is still the longest arch bridge outside China.
The bridge was the final link of Corridor L, a four-lane route on U.S. Route 19 built under the Appalachian Development Highway System to open up a region whose coal towns had faded with the mechanisation of mining. Before it, crossing the gorge meant winding down to the one-lane Fayette Station Bridge near the river and up again; the new span cut that trip from about 45 minutes to 45 seconds. It was designed by the Michael Baker Company, under chief engineer Clarence V. Knudsen and bridge engineer Frank J. Kempf, and built by the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel between June 1974 and October 1977 at a cost of $37 million. It is made of COR-TEN weathering steel, which forms its own protective layer of rust; one of the difficulties was making the welds weather at the same rate as the rest of the steel.
The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, before it was 50 years old, because of its engineering significance and its impact on local transport, and in 2005 it appeared on West Virginia's state quarter. It stands within New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, which became a national park in 2020, and the National Park Service visitor centre at its northern end has overlooks and a stairway partway down into the gorge. A narrow inspection catwalk runs under the roadway for the whole length of the bridge. Each year on the third Saturday of October the road is closed for Bridge Day, when BASE jumpers leap from the deck and climbers rappel down to the river.
Getting there
The bridge carries U.S. Route 19 over the gorge just outside the small town of Fayetteville in Fayette County. The nearest larger town is Beckley, about 34 km away, and the nearest airport is Raleigh County Memorial Airport (BKW) near Beckley, about 32 km away. Amtrak's Cardinal line runs along the river beneath the bridge.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The New River Gorge Bridge is a steel arch bridge 3,030 feet (924 m) long over the New River Gorge near Fayetteville, West Virginia, in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. With an arch 1,700 feet (518 m) long, the New River Gorge Bridge was the world's longest single-span arch bridge for 26 years; it is now the seventh longest and the longest outside of China. Part of U.S. Route 19, its construction marked the completion of Corridor L of the Appalachian Development Highway System. An average of 16,200 motor vehicles cross the bridge each day.
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