Tourism
The New River Gorge Bridge is within the National Park Service's New River Gorge National River, which protects this portion of the New River Gorge. At the northern end of the bridge, the Park Service operates a visitor center with scenic overlooks and a staircase that descends part of the way into the gorge.
A steel catwalk two feet (60 cm) wide runs the full length of the bridge underneath the roadway. Originally built to facilitate inspections, the catwalk is open for guided, handicapped-accessible quarter-mile "Bridge Walk" tours using safety rigging.
The bridge is the centerpiece of Fayette County's "Bridge Day", held the third Saturday of every October. This festival includes demonstrations of rappelling, ascending, and BASE jumping, Bungee jumping, however, has been banned during Bridge Day since 1993.
The bridge is closed to vehicular traffic during the festival. Prior to the September 11th terrorist attacks, two of the bridge's four lanes were open to traffic during the festivals, but security concerns have now prompted the closing of the entire span to vehicles during these events.
The first person to jump off the New River Gorge Bridge was Burton Ervin, who lives in Cowen, West Virginia, and was a coal-mine foreman. Burton jumped on Friday, August 1, 1979, using a conventional North American Aerodynamics Mini Rig System with a 32-foot Lopo canopy. Four BASE jumpers have died at the bridge, three of these during Bridge Day festivals, and one other killed while performing an illegal jump.
Read more about this topic: New River Gorge Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word tourism:
“In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.”
—Robert Runcie (b. 1921)