Qualla: Holly River State Park

Holly River State Park: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aparkswv, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two hundred fifty men with shovels, axes, and the New Deal in their pockets walked into Webster County in the mid-1930s and started building a state park. They cleared trails. They laid up stone for cabin chimneys. They split timber for cabin walls. They sawed lumber and dug latrines and built the kind of low-key rustic infrastructure that the federal government, in a deliberate decision, was deploying to put unemployed Americans back to work. When they were done they had built Holly River State Park - 8,294 acres of preserved Appalachian forest in a remote corner of central West Virginia, which would become the second-largest park in the state system.

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Image: Aparkswv | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holly River State Park: The New Deal in the Woods

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aparkswv, CC BY-SA 4.0. The federal alphabet agencies of the 1930s - the CCC, the WPA, and their cousins - left a deep imprint on the public landscape of the United States. At Holly River, the work was done primarily by the Works Progress Administration, which hired 250 local men to build what the West ...

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Image: Aparkswv | CC BY-SA 4.0

Holly River State Park: Nine Cabins

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Walt Sturgeon (Mycowalt), CC BY-SA 3.0. The nine cabins built in the 1930s sit along a tributary of the Laurel Fork of the Holly River, each with a stone fireplace and a name rather than a number among the families that come back year after year. They are not luxurious. They are heated by their fireplaces, furnished wi...

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Image: Walt Sturgeon (Mycowalt) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Holly River State Park: Potato Knob and the Falls

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Haem85 at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. Potato Knob rises 600 feet above the valley floor in a steep cone that the trail switchbacks up. The summit gives one of those Appalachian views where you can see five ridges, three forested hollows, and exactly one other building. Upper Falls drops in a single sheet on Fall Run,...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Haem85 at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

Holly River State Park: The One-Room School

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valerius Tygart, CC BY-SA 3.0. Windy Gap School is not original to the park. It is a one-room schoolhouse that was sitting on a remote tract owned by the Division of Natural Resources, gradually rotting back into the ground. The Holly River State Park Foundation organized a volunteer project in the mid-2010s t...

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Image: Valerius Tygart | CC BY-SA 3.0

Holly River State Park: Festival Weekend

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Forest Wander from Cross Lanes, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every Labor Day weekend since 1992, the park has hosted the Holly River Festival - a small-town celebration that combines crafts, music, food, and a fundraising auction for the park itself. The festival draws several thousand visitors over the long weekend to a park that normally...

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Image: Forest Wander from Cross Lanes, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0