Natural Tunnel State Park
Virginia State Park; The Tunnel Is A Natural Limestone Formation Carrying An Active Freight Railway · Duffield, Virginia
A limestone tunnel eight hundred and fifty feet long and about ten storeys high, cut clean through a ridge in far south-west Virginia by Stock Creek over a million years or so, and then handed a second life by the railway. In the 1890s engineers looked at it and decided that a hole already through the mountain was too good to ignore, so they laid track through it, and coal trains still run through the tunnel today - which means the standing joke about this park is true: you can walk into a natural cave formation and be asked to stand back for a freight train. William Jennings Bryan called it the Eighth Wonder of the World and the label stuck to the signage. Visitors reach the tunnel floor either by a steep walking trail or by a chairlift that drops down the gorge wall, and at the bottom there is a viewing platform close enough to the portal to feel the air move. Around it the park runs to eight hundred and fifty acres with a swimming pool, camping, cabins, an amphitheatre and a reconstructed Wilderness Road blockhouse.
1420 Natural Tunnel Parkway, Duffield, Virginia, 24244, United States
Park open daily, generally 8 AM to dusk with shorter winter hours. Visitor centre, chairlift, swimming pool, camping and cabins are all SEASONAL, running mainly from late spring to early autumn - the chairlift in particular has been out of service for maintenance in past seasons, so confirm before travelling. Separate charges apply for the chairlift and pool. The railway through the tunnel is active and runs to no published schedule.
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