As Bridge Day Nears 50th Anniversary, Organizers Look Back

Held annually every third Saturday in October on the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayette County, an estimated 60,000 spectators will walk across the bridge to enjoy vendors, views and BASE jumpers flying into the gorge below.  Last year, 315 jumpers from 35 states and 4 countries completed 752 jumps. 

Tim Naylor is executive assistant to the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce, the primary organizer of the event. He advises visitors to come prepared to walk.  

“If you walk from one entrance to the other to shop all the vendors and the length of the bridge, you’re looking at about a two-mile walk one way and  two miles back,” he said. “Plan to do a lot of walking, big crowds, and lots of good food and arts and crafts and a lot of things like that to kind of enjoy.”  

Naylor called the event an “economic boom” for the region, as tens of thousands of people patronize businesses from hotels and restaurants to cottage industries. 

“A lot of those vendors, they kind of bank on Bridge Day as their end of the year financial push to get them through the winter months,” he said. “It’s  really a big economic boom for the whole area.” 

According to Naylor, Bridge Day is a rain-or-shine event. He said the only concern would be high winds, but that’s not in the forecast this year. 

“Really, really high winds would kind of stop the BASE jumpers. But even then, that’s very rare because they’re all very knowledgeable about the conditions and know what they need to do to do this safely, so it would really take something kind of strong and dramatic to kind of put a stop to the BASE jumping,” he said. “The weather so far is looking pretty good. It’s kind of chilly, a lot chillier than the past couple of years, but it still should be a beautiful day.” 

Celebrated since 1980, Bridge Day is now in its 47th year. Naylor said as the festival quickly approaches its 50th anniversary, organizers want to get into contact with the bridge’s surviving builders. 

“We know a lot of them are probably in their 70s now, so we’re kind of hoping that we can at least get in contact with some of them and maybe do some sort of celebration to kind of commemorate all the work that was put into making the bridge happen,” he said. 

Naylor also welcomes hearing from the families of builders, all of whom can reach out to him via email at tim@officialbridgeday.com or via the “Contact Us” form on the official Bridge Day website.