Blackwater Falls State Park

The name puzzles first-time visitors, because the water is clearly not black but a rich amber, like strong iced tea. The answer lies in the forest overhead. The plateau grows dense stands of red spruce and eastern hemlock, and as their needles drop and slowly break down in the boggy soils and cold streams, they leach out tannic acid, the same natural compound that darkens a cup of tea. The river gathers that stain drop by drop, so by the time it reaches the falls the water glows amber over the pale sandstone.

A traveler named Philip Pendleton Kennedy came through in 1851 and was so struck by the dark, wild river that he wrote a whole book about it, The Blackwater Chronicle, one of the earliest accounts of this remote country. The name he helped fix has stuck ever since, and standing at the overlook you can see exactly what he meant: bright foam breaking into amber pools, walled in by evergreens.

It is hard to believe now, but a century ago these slopes were nearly stripped bare. In the late 1800s and early 1900s the great spruce and hemlock forests of the highlands were cut for timber, and the dry slash left behind fed enormous forest fires that burned the mountains down to bare rock and soil. The rich northern woodland that draws visitors today is a recovery, a forest that has grown back over the wounds of the timber boom.

In the 1930s the West Virginia Power and Transmission Company gave land around the falls to the state, and in 1937 Blackwater Falls State Park was formally established to protect the falls and the canyon. Depression-era work crews built early trails and facilities, and over the decades the park grew to more than two thousand acres, safeguarding the falls, the gorge, and the returning spruce-hemlock forest all at once.

There are two ways to meet the main falls. A long wooden stairway of many steps drops down the canyon wall to viewing platforms close enough to feel the spray, a fine descent if knees allow. For everyone else the Gentle Trail is a short, paved path to an observation deck with a clear view across to the falls, an easy walk suited to strollers, grandparents, and anyone who would rather save their legs.

The park hides more than its headline waterfall. A short trail from near the lodge leads into a hemlock grove to Elakala Falls, a slender drop tucked into a mossy hollow that photographers love. On the far side of the canyon, Lindy Point is a quick walk to a rocky outcrop three thousand feet up, gazing straight down the eight-mile gorge, and it is one of the most photographed sunset spots in the state.

Each season rewrites the place. Rhododendron blooms in early summer, the maples and birches blaze in autumn over the dark evergreens, and in winter the park opens a long groomed sled run and the falls fringe themselves with ice, making the same view feel like a different world.

The park lies just southwest of Davis, the highest town in West Virginia, in the cool Allegheny Highlands. Because it sits high on the plateau it runs cooler and wetter than the valleys below, so pack a layer even in July and expect real snow and ice from late fall into spring. The park stays open year round, and each season shows a different face of the same canyon.

Give yourself at least half a day to walk the Gentle Trail deck, brave the stairway to the base if you can, hunt down Elakala Falls in the hemlocks, and time Lindy Point for late light. Keep to the decks and trails, since the wet rocks near the water are slick, and watch children closely around the drops. It is the kind of place that repays a slow, unhurried visit, a genuinely wild corner of the Alleghenies with an easy trail to its most famous view.

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