James River Park System
City Of Richmond Park System Along The James River Fall Line; A National Recreation Trail Corridor With Class III IV Whitewater Inside The City Limits · Richmond, Virginia
Six hundred acres of riverbank, island and rapid running straight through the middle of Richmond, and the reason the city has a claim almost no other American state capital can make: there is genuine Class III and IV whitewater inside the city limits, in sight of office towers. The James drops about a hundred feet through the fall line here, and the park system is strung along both banks and across several islands to give access to all of it. Belle Isle is the centrepiece - reached by a footbridge slung underneath the Lee Bridge, a former quarry and Civil War prison camp now covered in scrub, granite slabs and people sunbathing on rocks in the middle of the current. Upstream, Pony Pasture is the family swimming and wading end; downstream, the Hollywood and Pipeline rapids are the serious water, and the Pipeline Walkway runs along a live sewer pipe under the railway with herons nesting beside it. There are twenty-odd miles of trail, world-class urban mountain biking on Buttermilk and North Bank, and it is all free.
4001 Riverside Drive, Richmond, Virginia, 23225, United States
Open daily, generally dawn to dusk, and FREE - there is no gate and no entrance fee anywhere in the system. It is MANY SEPARATE ACCESS POINTS rather than one park, so check the city access map before choosing where to go. THE RIVER LEVEL GOVERNS EVERYTHING: the city restricts or closes water recreation at high gauge readings, and sections of trail close after flooding. Lots fill by mid-morning on warm weekends.
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