The New River Gorge Bridge opened to traffic on October 22, 1977, and for a few years it was simply the longest single-arch steel-span bridge in the world - a striking, slightly disorienting structure that Appalachian drivers crossed without quite realizing what they were on. By 1980, somebody in Fayetteville had the idea to celebrate the bridge with a one-day festival, closing the lanes and letting people walk across to look down at the river. BASE jumpers - then a small, wild subculture - asked if they could leap from the span. The state and the park service said yes, once a year. The festival quickly outgrew its small-town origins. By the 2000s, organizers were estimating crowds of around 100,000 people, drawn equally by the jumps, the views, and the carnival of food trucks, vendors, and music on either end of the bridge.

BASE jumping at Bridge Day is the headline. The acronym stands for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth - the four classes of fixed objects the discipline involves leaping from. Bridge Day is one of the few legal opportunities of its kind in the United States. Several hundred jumpers register each year. They depart from the bridge in waves, some doing simple delays into canopy openings, others firing themselves from a small catapult mounted on the deck for added drama. Some jump in wingsuits. Some jump from wheelchairs. Most land in the field beside the river. The discipline carries real risk: in 1987, Steven Gyrsting of Paoli, Pennsylvania died at Bridge Day after his main parachute failed to inflate and his reserve could not save him. In 2006, Brian Schubert - one of the true pioneers of BASE jumping, the first person to leap from El Capitan in Yosemite in 1966 - died here when his chute deployed too late and he struck the river. In 2011, Christopher Brewer of Pensacola survived a wingsuit jump in which his canopy failed to open, landing in the river paralyzed but conscious.

Not everyone who comes to Bridge Day jumps. Since 1981, rappelling off the underside of the bridge has been part of the festival - participants rig in to the deck and lower themselves on rope down toward the catwalk and the gorge. Some companies offer guided tours under the span throughout the year, but Bridge Day remains the festival flagship. Bungee jumping had its moment too. In 1985, stunt performer Skip Stanley - known as the Blue Bandit - became the first confirmed bungee jumper at the bridge. In 1993, Chris Allum and six friends crammed into a basket to set a world record for most people in a single bungee jump. The problem was logistics: reeling bungee jumpers back up took so long that it kept BASE jumpers grounded. Organizers banned bungee from Bridge Day in 1994.

For everyone who is not jumping, Bridge Day is mostly about the walk. Cars are cleared by early morning. By mid-day a slow tide of pedestrians is moving in both directions across the four closed lanes, leaning over the rails to watch jumpers fall, browsing the vendor booths on each end, eating funnel cake and brisket sandwiches in a temporarily car-free corridor that seems to redefine the whole infrastructure of the gorge. Looking down through the steel grating, you can see the rapids of the New River 876 feet below, the figures of jumpers spiraling toward them, the shape of a national park - established in 2020 - laid out in green ridges to either side. A plaque on the bridge commemorates the festival. So, increasingly, does the calendar of every BASE jumper in the country.