Kaymoor Mine: a Photo Essay

These are just a couple of words a visitor might use to describe West Virginia's New River Gorge, but it wasn't always that way. As climbers, we admire the featured, bullet-hard, Nutall sandstone while often overlooking the fact that the Gorge itself was once home to a thriving mining community. Park at Roger's and pay a buck for him to watch your car, then hike down past the stone and into a world forgetten by time. Go deeper to the closed mineshafts where soot-covered men toiled in 36"-tall spaces. Descend even further to the ghost town, Kaymoor Bottom, to see first hand how nature reclaims what was once hers.