Grandview

The main overlook at Grandview looks straight down onto one of the New River's most dramatic features, a sweeping horseshoe bend where the river loops around a long forested ridge. From the rim you can trace the water far below and follow the gorge as it winds off toward the horizon, the canyon walls stacked in green ridges.

The New River, despite its name, is among the oldest rivers on the continent, older than the mountains it cuts through. Over immense stretches of time it carved this deep gorge down through hard sandstone and older rock, and the rim you stand on is that same durable sandstone, left high while the river ground its way down toward the level far below.

Beyond the main overlook, trails follow the rim to additional viewpoints, threading through hardwood forest and past ledges of exposed rock. The Grandview Rim Trail links overlook to overlook along the canyon edge, and shorter loops reach quieter perches away from the crowds.

Grandview is famous among West Virginians for its spring flowers. In late spring the rim blazes with the blooms of Catawba rhododendron and flame azalea, turning the woods pink, purple, and orange against the deep green of the gorge. It is one of the best places in the state to catch that display, and it draws visitors specifically for the show.

For much of the twentieth century Grandview was a West Virginia state park, complete with an outdoor amphitheater where the state's outdoor historical dramas were staged on summer nights. Its overlooks and gardens made it a beloved regional destination long before the wider gorge won national protection.

In recent decades Grandview was folded into the national park unit protecting the New River Gorge, and in 2020 that unit became New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, West Virginia's first national park. Grandview is now its high, southern gateway, a quieter counterpoint to the busier areas around the great steel bridge downstream.

The New River Gorge was, for generations, coal country. The narrow canyon below Grandview once held a chain of company coal towns and the rail lines that hauled the coal out, and the ruins and stories of that boom-and-bust era still shape the park's identity. It is a landscape of both natural grandeur and hard industrial history.

Long before the coal camps, this was the ancestral homeland and shared hunting ground of the Shawnee, the Cherokee, the Lenape, and other peoples, whose descendant nations continue today beyond West Virginia. Today the gorge is a haven for hikers, climbers, and paddlers, and its forests shelter black bear, white-tailed deer, and abundant birdlife, while the river below runs some of the best whitewater in the East.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.