Park Trail GuideTrip planning

Reviewed guide · Mid-Atlantic

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve

Unit code NERI. Figures retrieved 2026-11-06. Official alerts, fees, and closures are not copied here.

Show on the atlas
long, wide waterfall spanning a wide river
Public-domain National Park Service photograph. Credit: NPS photo/Dave Bieri. Asset record.
States on the system list
West Virginia
Guide region
Mid-Atlantic. Editorial grouping of the state that contains the centroid, or the first listed state when the point is offshore.
Anniversary-table date
November 10, 1978

Table note: redesignated from New River Gorge National River in 2021

Gross area acres
72,405.24

NPS fee acres: 55,029.78. Report date September 30, 2026. Gross area is not the same column as fee ownership.

Boundary centroid
37.8970, -81.0429

Containing shoreline polygon: West Virginia. Not an entrance.

Recreation-visit record
Highest monthly mean is in June, July, or August

Highest mean: July. Lowest mean: January. Mean annual total across complete years: 1,460,315 (10 complete years).

The acreage row is named NEW RIVER GORGE NP & PRES, so the figures include the preserve with the park. The boundary service typed the unit as a national preserve and marked the status Unofficial, while the National Park System list places it under national parks.

On the Chiricahua FAQ, the National Park Service lists New River Gorge and Preserve (2020) among recent redesignations. That sentence does not give a month or a day. It is not a substitute for the anniversaries table.

The monthly record

January: 33,245 mean recreation visitsFebruary: 39,209 mean recreation visitsMarch: 75,862 mean recreation visitsApril: 99,808 mean recreation visitsMay: 160,694 mean recreation visitsJune: 199,631 mean recreation visitsJuly: 231,971 mean recreation visitsAugust: 196,035 mean recreation visitsSeptember: 144,712 mean recreation visitsOctober: 164,938 mean recreation visitsNovember: 72,732 mean recreation visitsDecember: 41,478 mean recreation visitsJFMAMJJASOND
Mean of reported recreation visits by calendar month, 2016–2025. Gold is the lowest mean and rust is the highest. A missing bar was not reported. This is a historic average, not a live crowd count.
Monthly recreation-visit record
MonthMeanLowest yearHighest yearYears in the mean
January33,24524,10641,66110
February39,20928,67161,35810
March75,86250,675114,67010
April99,80852,875133,63410
May160,694109,036251,66610
June199,631155,085263,42510
July231,971170,593293,19610
August196,035145,611270,10510
September144,71296,567198,63810
October164,938111,263268,52610
November72,73245,939110,36810
December41,47826,54481,49210

How to use this guide

New River Gorge National Park and Preserve is the official name, and the acreage workbook uses one row for the park and preserve together. Do not subtract a preserve in your head. The boundary service, when these files were retrieved, still typed the unit as a national preserve and marked the status Unofficial, while the system list places it with the national parks. The map uses the centroid anyway and labels the conflict.

The anniversaries table dates a line to November 10, 1978 and says the unit was redesignated from a national river in 2021. The Chiricahua FAQ, in a list of recent redesignations, says New River Gorge (2020). Both sentences are from the Park Service. Neither is a river gauge or a bridge schedule. Read conditions before you treat the gorge as open.

Official pages

These links were checked when the site was built. A working link is not a live feed. If a standard address did not respond, it is omitted.

Nearest other national parks

Distances are great-circle miles between boundary centroids. They are not road distances or travel times.