Qualla: Tunney Hunsaker Bridge

Tunney Hunsaker Bridge: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Teke, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the great steel arch of the New River Gorge Bridge made the trip across the canyon a 45-second affair, getting from one rim to the other meant a slow winding descent down Fayette Station Road, a careful crossing of a narrow iron truss bridge at the river, and an equally slow climb up the other side. The whole journey took about 45 minutes. That old crossing - completed in 1889 by the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company of Roanoke - still spans the New River about 600 feet below the modern bridge deck. Since 1998 it has carried the name Tunney Hunsaker, after the Fayetteville police chief and professional heavyweight boxer who once climbed into a ring in Louisville against an 18-year-old named Cassius Clay.

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Image: Teke | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tunney Hunsaker Bridge: Fayette Station Road

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. The truss bridge was built to serve Fayette Station, a small railroad community at the bottom of the gorge where the Chesapeake and Ohio mainline ran. Visitors arriving by train could cross the bridge into Fayetteville proper, on the south rim. Local farmers from the plateau coul...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tunney Hunsaker Bridge: The New Bridge and the Old Bridge

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the New River Gorge Bridge opened in 1977, the steel arch high above became the new primary route for US Route 19. Traffic on Fayette Station Road dropped dramatically. The old iron truss, in poor structural condition after nine decades of unbroken service, was closed for ve...

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Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tunney Hunsaker Bridge: Tunney Hunsaker, Police Chief and Boxer

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Orville Junior Hunsaker - everyone called him Tunney, after the heavyweight champion Gene Tunney - grew up in Beckwith, West Virginia, served as Fayetteville's chief of police, and made his name in the small world of West Virginia boxing in the 1950s. In 1960 he was asked to take...

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Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tunney Hunsaker Bridge: Standing on the Span

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today the old bridge sits in the river-level core of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, accessible by car via the switchback road or on foot via trails that descend from the rim. It crosses water that once turned C&O locomotive wheels and now carries whitewater rafters b...

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0