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Walkers can now walk next to the New River in Virginia and West Virginia, following the path of Mary Drapler Ingles.
Some 260 years ago, a starving frontierswoman struggled southward along the New River. She’d escaped the Shawnees who kidnapped her, and was headed home. Mary Draper Ingles was rescued in Virginia’s Giles County after following the river nearly 450 miles.
Ingles’ story has spawned a book, a play—and now a trail.
Hikers can retrace Ingles’ steps for seven miles on the new Mary Ingles Trail along the New between Glen Lyn, Virginia and Shumate Falls. The trail was recently designated part of the Great Eastern Trail, a 1,800-mile hiking trail running between northern Alabama and western New York state.
“The land still looks like what Mary probably saw. She could have ducked under these cliffs for shelter and eaten pawpaws here,” says Ralph Robertson, who constructed the trail with the Narrows Now Trail Club. The path, which runs through U. S. Army Corps of Engineers land, is primarily a hiking trail, although mountain bikes are allowed. The riverside path continues into West Virginia’s Bluestone Wildlife Management Area, where it passes three campgrounds and ends near Hinton, West Virginia.
“The West Virginia section isn’t blazed,” Robertson says. “You just do what Mary did—follow the river.”