Breaks Interstate Park
Nan K. Chase photo
I’m not afraid of heights. And yet … as I approached the edge of Towers Overlook, one of a series of dramatic scenic observation points at Breaks Interstate Park, I felt unexpectedly breathless and giddy. After all, the view in front of me stretched 1,000 feet down.
While I watched a pair of vultures riding the afternoon thermals I realized they were 500 feet below me. Two days later as I marveled at a peregrine falcon streaking toward its prey, same thing: bird life was going on not above my head but far, far below.
Breaks Interstate Park straddles the Virginia-Kentucky border and is billed as the “Grand Canyon of the South.” While it’s accurate to say that the gorge carved by what today is the Russell Fork River is a canyon, it bears no resemblance to its cousin out West. Breaks is a heavily wooded, V-shaped, serpentine gorge with the river crashing over boulders and sending upward a constant churning roar—along with flashes of its blue and white path
And although the park’s detailed visitors guide is loaded with photos of families merrily swimming, hiking, fishing, canoeing, mountain biking, and horseback riding, Breaks is more than just fun and games.
After three days of exploring the 4,600-acre Breaks Interstate Park and nearby communities, I came away awed by the importance of the stories etched on its landscape: geological history, American history, and natural history all wrapped up in one big, beautiful, and too often overlooked package. Only by visiting the park could I appreciate its grandeur and its importance as an unspoiled wilderness in the middle of coal country.
Breaks Interstate Park
A dramatic view of the river that dominates the park known as ‘The Breaks.’ Nan K. Chase photo
In the beginning
The origins of Breaks Interstate Park—and of its unusual name—go back 300 million years. After a slow-motion mountain-forming collision of the North African and American continental plates, water began cutting downward through layers of sediment. Softer rock was worn away, leaving dramatic spires of harder rock: the towers punching the sky.
The tremendous forces that pushed up the Appalachian Mountains crumpled some of them and left others in long ridges. One in particular, the 125-mile-long Pine Mountain, formed the spine of Breaks Interstate Park. By geological accident immense deposits of coal formed throughout the region, but Pine Mountain had no marketable coal, so as countless ridges were exploited nearby, Pine Mountain remained unscathed.
Pine Mountain is most unusual in being one uninterrupted, scallop-edged entity, rather than a lone pinnacle. In only a few places could man and beast traverse the mountain’s diagonal span. Those were what the pioneers called “breaks.” At the northeastern end lies Breaks Park; at the southwest sits the Cumberland Gap. The steep, rugged terrain of Breaks defeated even Daniel Boone’s efforts in 1767 to find a western passage for settlement. He had to go to the far end to penetrate the wilderness in 1775.
There was some talk in the mid-1900s of turning Breaks into a new national park, according to today’s superintendent, Austin Bradley. With World War II that talk faded away. The park that eventually formed was created in 1953 through an unusual two-state compact; only one other such arrangement exists today in the United States, between New York and New Jersey, which manages Palisades Interstate Park. The “not a state park, not a national park” template gives Breaks a special feel.
The layout of Breaks is brilliant: a ring road on the high ground in Virginia. Along the western edge are seven overlooks into the gorge, each one with a slightly different view. The eastern section of the park contains an array of lodging options, from a yurt and campsites to cottages, cabins, plus a comfortable motel-style lodge near the visitor center; there’s a restaurant open during high season, a lake for boating (with paddle boat rentals), and a wildlife pond. The visitor center is a must-see, for it illustrates the mind-boggling scale of logging in the gorge at the turn of the 20th century.
The park boasts nearly 20 hiking trails, most of them short and easy, but one, called Bottom of the Breaks, is described as a vertical 800-foot goat path with rattlesnakes.
Breaks Interstate Park
A mural celebrates Grundy, Virginia. Nan K. Chase photo
A tale of two towns
When I told people I was going to visit Breaks Interstate Park, the reaction was unfailing: “Never heard of it.” Maybe with such riches as the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Appalachian Trail, and the waterfalls of Transylvania County so close at hand, it’s understandable that visits to this park may be a bit of a stretch.
The fact that the park lies in the heart of coal country may also scare people off.
My husband and I approached from our hometown in Virginia—from the east. I had long wanted to see the town of Grundy, Virginia. Located in a steep valley, Grundy had been flooded by the Levisa Fork River so many times by the late 20th century that a new downtown was built on a flat space blasted out of a mountainside above the old downtown. The setting is intriguing, anchored by a Walmart built atop a two-story parking deck. We shopped for picnic supplies, ate a hearty lunch up the road, and headed for Breaks via some twisty country roads.
We went in spring, when redbuds and dogwood trees were in full bloom, and at the park the mountainsides were draped in lacy light-green foliage. Autumn, of course, is popular for leaf color; in addition, during October, weekly releases of water from John W. Flannagan Dam attract whitewater kayakers from around the world.
Our other urban outing was into Kentucky to see Elkhorn City, a second gateway to Breaks. In the heyday of the coal boom, Elkhorn City was a major rail junction with lots of social amenities. Today, most of the commercial district is slumbering. What remains are a thrift store and a liquor store, a handsome branch library, the brightly painted headquarters of United Steel Workers union local 14581, a quiescent railroad museum, an improbably steep cemetery, and a friendly café called Time Out Pizza & Grill, located at the one stoplight and recognizable by a truck-size pile of wood that fuels the oven.
We enjoyed freshly brewed coffee for 50 cents a mug, and the pizza was pretty good. Time Out has a deck overlooking Russell Fork, but even better, inside there are relics of the coal mining days and the largest taxidermized bobcat I’ve ever seen.
What a setting Elkhorn City has! Pine Mountain looms above, and the river flows through, clear and wide; no wonder the Russell Fork Canoe Trail and the Pine Mountain Trail are based there. The town may soon wake up and come back to life.
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Breaks Interstate Park
Nan K. Chase photo
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Breaks Interstate Park
Breaks Interstate Park superintendent Austin Bradley. Nan K. Chase photo
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Breaks Interstate Park
One of the elk statues decorated in Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Nan K. Chase photo
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Breaks Interstate Park
One of the elk statues decorated in Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Nan K. Chase photo
About those elk
Long ago, herds of elk filled the eastern lands from “almost Florida to almost Maine,” Bradley said. Western herds were similarly vast. Eastern elk were hunted to extinction and the last killed in 1877, in Pennsylvania.
In recent years, though, the huge animals have been reintroduced successfully from the West into lands formerly marred by surface coal mining; it’s a perfect match. Breaks Interstate Park lies in one of three Virginia counties where elk herds are being protected and managed; because Virginia’s elk program has worked so well, limited hunting is now allowed. Today the Virginia herds number about 250, in Kentucky many times that.
One of the most popular experiences for visitors to Breaks are elk-viewing tours conducted by the park on Fridays and Saturdays in spring and fall (it’s too hot for elk in the open during summer, so they stay hidden in the shade). This spring, we lucked into a daybreak elk tour. Most of the commercial tours take place in the evening, and include dinner served at a mountaintop picnic shelter—all for $35 per person.
To see the elk we drove almost half an hour from the Breaks park to a 600-acre conservation zone “up in the hollow” and behind locked gates to keep out poachers. The scenery was dreamy and the educational aspect superb. It was impossible to tell that this panoramic vista had once been completely opened up for coal extraction. This is an inspiring example of coordination, cooperation, and visionary thinking. “It’s not the moonscape that a lot of people think of when they hear surface mining,” Bradley explained.
As the moon went down and the sun came up - there were the elk. We stayed far away, for elk are huge and dangerous (males here average about 750 pounds, cows a few hundred pounds less). Bradley knows the elk and their habits from years of involvement, and his enthusiasm is infectious. The yearly life cycle of elk involves bachelor groups and distinct cow and calf groups—in the spring—and life is sedate.
During fall comes the rut, and the drama. Males battle for primacy in the mating game, puffing up their necks to do battle with their massive antlers, and they bugle like a brass band, mainly to attract females.
The elk were cool, but the story of land reclamation—and hope—was better still.
To close the circle of our three-day visit, we returned home by a different route: south on Virginia 80 through miles and miles of uninhabited wilderness; Va. 83 would be equally spectacular.
What a treat.
Planning your visit
The main entrance to Breaks Interstate Park is located on Virginia 80, about 180 miles north of the Asheville metro area. Because of the remoteness of the area it’s advisable to top off fuel tanks—or stay fully charged—in the towns of Clinchco or Haysi, Virginia, before exploring the park and returning home.
For lodging, campground, picnic shelter, and elk tour information and reservations visit breakspark.com or call 276.865.4413, ext. 0. Lodging reservations may be made 11 months in advance. Lodging options except campgrounds and yurt are available year-round; campground season begins April 1 and ends by November 1. Elk tours are available in spring and fall.
The park restaurant is open during peak season. Otherwise, guests may wish to bring in some of their own food, as other dining options are located at some distance.