Gauley River National Recreation Area

If you read my first blog posting on “Planning the first trip”, you will recall that I chose five park units to visit on my drive from Iowa back to Florida. During that drive through Ohio, I stopped by the headquarters of the Buckeye Trail Association in Shawnee, Ohio. I used to provide computer services to the organization, along with performing trail maintenance on a section near my home. The GIS Coordinator and cartographer lives next to the main office and has been a good friend for over a decade.

As I told him of my planned trips over the coming years, he asked about the very next park I planned to visit: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. “Why aren’t you visiting the Gauley River National Recreation Area?” he asked. He had an excellent point!! Gauley River NRA was less than 30 minutes northwest of New River NP. If I did not visit it on this trip, I would have to make a long, out-of-the-way trip to include it on some future date. How I overlooked it in my planning, I don’t know (other than all of the planning was done quite hastily). Fortunately, a quick edit of my itinerary spreadsheet and the oversight was remedied.

With all that said and done, I did realize that there was not going to be much for me at Gauley River NRA. The highlight of this unit IS the white water river, famous for its rafting and canoeing. Most of the land bordering the river is inaccessible or private, so even photo opportunities are limited unless you are on the river. I had no intention of rafting this river in my current physical shape. There is no Visitor’s Center here (the one at New River doubles for Gauley River NRA).

A primitive campground is available near the northeastern end of the unit. The Gauley River is dammed up at this point with Summersville Lake extending miles to the northeast. The Gauley River NRA heads south, then west from the dam for over 25 miles, forming the National Recreation Area. Where the official Park Service land ends, the river turns south again, meeting the New River in the town of Gauley Bridge to form the Kanawha River, which will flow west to the Ohio River at Huntington.

I did park near the campground and walked down an access road to the river’s edge. I was able to get a few photos – nothing as spectacular as some on the NPS’s webpage – then climbed back up to the parking lot and headed to the most spectacular views of this entire trip in New River Gorge National Park.

Steve