Today we drove about 13 miles north up Hwy 19 across the New River Gorge Bridge and stopped at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center.
There within the visitor center we toured the interpretive center and looked over the displays explaining the history of the area.
We watched a 15 minute movie on the area but we were a little disappointed they did not really talk about the construction of the bridge, so I will.
Construction of the bridge began in June of 1974 and was completed on October 22, 1977. It was contains 22,000 tons of structural steel that was fabricated in Pennsylvania. The bridge is 3030.5 ft long and 876 ft high from the New River below. It primarily gets it's strength from a 1700 ft arch. There are 44 million lbs of steel in the bridge and an additional 44 million lbs of concrete. These numbers are mind-boggling to me!
Some other facts:
- Longest single arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere
- 3rd longest single arch bridge in the world
- 2nd highest vehicle carrying bridge in the United States
- 5th highest vehicle carrying bridge in the world
- 3rd highest bridge in the United States
Once a year on the third Saturday of every October, they celebrate "Bridge Day", an opportunity to commemorate the importance of the iconic New River Gorge Bridge to West Virginia. It is closed to vehicular traffic and opened to pedestrians to explore the bridge and allowing BASE jumping for a few hours on that day only. The bridge is also on the 2005 West Virginia state quarter.
Back to the visitor center, after the movie we had a look out the massive windows on the back side of the visitor center and the deck that faces the bridge. The view is a bit obscured with the foliage of the trees, but there was a great view of the gorge and the New River down below.
From that first platform you can choose to continue on down the boardwalk and descend 178 steps to the bottom viewing platform with an even better view. As the sign says, "Please remember that while going down is an option, coming back up is not. Know your limits and thank you for visiting the New River Gorge National River."!!
We mutually decided to pass on the 178 steps today, but instead look into driving the Fayette Station Road to the bottom of the gorge. I saw the switchbacks on the map, but did not see any restrictions published except for a comment saying the road would not support RV's.
In retrospect it was not unexpected that my Garmin evaluated the size of our vehicle , the characteristics of the road, and said, "yeah, um, probably not". I fought it for a while and then the frustration set in, the blood pressure and attitude spiked, and I gave up. Looking at the route after the fact on Google Maps, our 21.61 ft long and 7.05 ft wide "big ol' brown long bed truck" with big "hips" and sucky turning radius has no business trying to navigate that road. Instead we stopped at a grocery store on the way back and replenished the fridge and pantry before returning to the campground.
Later our grandson Jon Ervin bowled in a tournament in Wisconsin so we tuned into a video stream from our daughter Michelle.
After that Doreen did the laundry in preparation for our travels in a couple days, and we watched the Chicago Cubs and the Kansas City Royals battle it out on a Sunday afternoon. Cubs came out victorious 7-3!
Tomorrow we will tour the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine and then return to do our normal pre-departure stuff in preparation for our departure Tuesday morning and trip to our next stop, Asheville NC.
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