WILDERNESS ROAD STATE PARK
Wilderness Road offers picnicking, hiking, and nature and living history programs. Visitors can enjoy the visitor center, home to a theater showing an award-winning docudrama, Wilderness Road, Spirit of a Nation. The center also has a frontier museum and a gift shop with unique regional gifts. The park features the reconstructed Martin's Station, an outdoor living history museum depicting life on Virginia's 1775 frontier. Guests also enjoy the park's picnic shelters, a 100-seat amphitheater, ADA-certified playground, sand volleyball court and horseshoe pits. Visitors can hike, bike or horseback ride on the 8.5-mile Wilderness Road Trail linking the park with more than 50 miles of trails in Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. The 1870s era mansion is available for weddings and meetings. It has a solarium that's perfect for showers, birthdays and other special functions. The park's visitor center theater and amphitheater also are available for group functions.
Wilderness Road State Park is in a geographically and historically significant region of Virginia. The park lies astride the Wilderness Road that winds down Powell's Valley. In 1775, Daniel Boone carved the Wilderness Road, and by 1800 more than 300,000 settlers traveled the Wilderness Road westward through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and the Midwest. Martin Station was originally settled by Joseph Martin, who arrived there on March 26, 1769, after a difficult journey. That fall, after an attackby Native American warriors, Martin abandoned the station but returned in earnest in January 1775.
Wilderness Road State Park was originally part of a farm owned by Robert M. Ely. The mansion was built in 1878, and several generations of Ely descendants lived there. The surrounding rural area still bears the name Elydale after the Ely family.
In the 1940s, the mansion and surrounding property were purchased by Karl and Ann Harris. Even though the mansion was renovated several times, the basic structure of the house remains the same.
Wilderness Road Trail bisects Wilderness Road State Park. Visitors may park cars and horse trailers at the park to access the trail. The trail connects the park with the campgrounds at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, six miles away.
The 1870s-era Karlan Mansion is available for weddings and meetings. It has a solarium that's perfect for showers, birthdays and other special functions. A 50-seat theater in the visitor center and a 100-seat amphitheater are also available for group functions.
The park offers primitive camping for groups. Campers must bring drinking water portable toilets are available, showers are not. Reservations can be made at the visitor center.
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