Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

The community of Eggleston in Giles County is one of the older communities on the river. Now newer structures are showing up along the river.

Video

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People have lived along the New River for at least 10,000 years. That's like a long weekend in the life of a river that was flowing long before there were people or mountains on its banks.

Abraham Wood came upon the New River more than 350 years ago. He called it Wood's River.

When Thomas Batts and Robert Fallam saw the river 17 years later, they thought they had found a link to the Pacific Ocean. They were sure they saw the tide coming in at Pearisburg.

"We set up a stick by the water side," the explorers recorded in their journal, "but found it ebbed very slowly."

Drinking water, water for crops and livestock, power for factories, fish for food and sport, tourism dollars -- people have drawn all these from this river that winds 320 miles through 21 counties in three states.

The federal government recognized the New River's significance nearly a decade ago, naming it one of 14 American Heritage Rivers. The New River Gorge National River protects 53 miles of the river in West Virginia. North Carolina and the federal government have designated more than 26 miles of the river Wild and Scenic. Proposals to add segments of the river in Virginia and West Virginia to the Wild and Scenic list have been floated and sunk for more than a decade. The New River is famous for sport fishing, rafting, canoeing and tubing. But for a few miles in West Virginia, it's little more than a trickle as most of the river is diverted through a tunnel under a mountain and through a power plant. Some of the largest polluters in Virginia sit on its banks. The Virginia Department of Health advises people to avoid eating some species of fish caught in the river and to limit their consumption of others.

But the greatest threat to the river isn't congressional inaction or industrial waste or threats to build dams or prisons or power plants, according to George Santucci, executive director of the National Committee for the New River.

"The one constant pressure which is probably the hardest one to figure out how to deal with is just general development," Santucci said.

And the most significant change that could alter the river's environment is houses. This series explores predominant issues ongoing in North Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia that will affect the future of the river.