A couple of years ago, Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine named Fayetteville West Virginia one of America’s coolest small towns. It’s an honor, but we had been keeping that little secret for a long time.
Most people know us for the New River Gorge Bridge. It’s a landmark, a modern engineering marvel, and, hey, it’s on the back of our quarter. We get to walk out on (and jump off) the bridge once a year on Bridge Day in October.
The rest of the year, the action takes place all around the bridge. This is paradise if you like outdoor fun. All the wild stuff- white water rafting, kayaking, rock climbing, and all the mild stuff- bird watching, fishing, walks in the woods… it all co-exists peacefully here in the Gorge.
There was a niche that was missing, though. Kids on skateboards were absent from the equation. We’re more pastoral than pavement, so there weren’t too many places to skate around town to begin with. Downtown, like so many other small downtowns, just wasn’t an option.
That’s when our little community came together to dedicate some space in the town park for a skate park. That idea was hatched 3 short years ago. Next to the baseball fields, near the hiking trails, there it now sits, three magnificent concrete bowls and a slew of other features for the kids here in town.
How’d it happen? You can sum it up in pretty much one word: Community. Local skateboarders Bill Chouinard and Sarah Chouinard (who also happens to be one of our town Docs) raised $220,000 along with others in the community to make the park happen. Here at the Preserve, we held a fairly huge benefit concert and donated more than $100,000 of the total cost of the project.
And as of three weeks ago, kids are literally riding the walls over there. We’ve always been one of America’s coolest small towns. Now, we’re just a little bit cooler.
Tags: community, fayetteville, skate park
