A letter from a local
Two thousand people, world-class everything.
Fayetteville is barely a town — one stoplight's worth of brick, a pizza place that doubles as the community center — perched on the rim of the New River Gorge. National park out the back door. Sandstone cliffs for forty miles. And in September the Gauley turns on and the best whitewater week in North America happens twenty minutes from my porch.
The climbing is endless, bullet-hard Nuttall sandstone; the rafting employs half the county; the mountain biking in Arrowhead's grown into a real scene. Bridge Day, one day a year, they let people parachute off the 876-foot bridge and the whole town shows up with lawn chairs.
Living is cheap in a way that bends what's possible: my friends own homes on guide wages and remote paychecks. Nobody's here by accident — population two thousand selects for people who mean it.
Come for Gauley season. Raft the big water, climb the next morning, watch the fog fill the gorge at dawn from Long Point. Mean it.
— Holler