Gorges State Park in Transylvania County could have a family campground open by fall 2021 for tents and RVs and five cabins, according to the Asheville Citizen Times.
The 7,500-acre park is in a rugged area of North Carolina’s southwestern mountains near Sapphire and has trails to Upper Bearwallow Falls within the park and Rainbow Falls and Turtleback Falls on adjacent Pisgah National Forest land, as well as other backcountry hiking. It currently allows primitive backpack camping at 12 sites in two areas and along the Foothills Trail several miles into the park.
The park also has a visitor center, picnic areas and mountain biking and bridle trails, and allows fishing and boating. (Boat access to the Toxaway River is available at Devil’s Fork State Park on Lake Jocasee in South Carolina.) A short but strenuous trail from the picnic area leads to an observation deck over Upper Bearwallow Falls, a long cascade on Bearwallow Creek.
According to the Citizen Times, new camping options will include 14 “Class A” RV sites with full hookups and picnic tables and 17 tent sites with concrete pads and picnic tables near a large bathhouse with showers.
The $3.5 million project will also add five cabins to the park, some handicap accessible, that will sleep up to six people and have electricity, heating and cooling. Currently, the only state parks with fully equipped cabins are Morrow Mountain near Troy and Hanging Rock near Danbury (below), both in the state’s Piedmont. Carolina Beach State Park, on the coast, has less-equipped camper cabins.
Construction on the campground in the northeastern section of the park near the Bearwallow Picnic Shelter began a year ago, the newspaper says.
Bob Holliday, who lives near the park and is a board member of the nonprofit Friends of Gorges State Park, told the newspaper that because Gorges is in a remote area more than an hour’s drive southwest of Asheville people have been “fairly screaming for overnight accommodations, most notably an RV park with hookups.”
Gorges State Park opened in 2009 and is still being developed. It had 184,225 visitors in 2020, a 25% increase from 2019, the Citizen Times says. On some weekends, staff would have to close the parking lot gates until spaces opened up, as occurred at several state parks during the 2020 pandemic.
Money for the new campground is from the N.C. Connect Bond, a $2 billion, voter-approved bond that will fund improvement or new building construction at all 40 state parks, as well as other statewide investments in education, agriculture, safety and water and sewer infrastructure.
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