A winter visit to Coopers Rock State Forest featuring snowshoe hikes, the Henry Clay Furnace, CCC history, and views over the Cheat River Gorge.

I woke before daylight in my rooftop tent, mounted atop my Subaru and parked along the Cheat River. Wind had worked through the valley overnight, shaking the fabric and carrying snow down from the surrounding hillsides. By morning, the storm had finished its work. Fresh snow covered the riverbanks and forest floor, and strong gusts moved steadily through the bare hardwoods. It was bitterly cold, unsettled weather, the kind that discouraged travel, but it also clarified the landscape, reducing it to form, exposure, and silence.

From the river corridor, I drove east and entered Coopers Rock State Forest, found parking, and hopped out on snowshoes. Trails were softened or erased by drifting snow, forcing a slower, more deliberate pace. Sound carried poorly in the cold, broken only by wind and the compression of snow underfoot. In winter, the forest revealed its underlying structure, ridgelines, drainages, and rock, stripped of foliage and distraction.

Following the trail network deeper into the woods, I reached the remains of the Henry Clay Furnace. Completed in 1836, it was the first steam-powered blast furnace in western Virginia, fueled by charcoal and capable of producing roughly four tons of pig iron per day at peak output. About 200 people once worked here, supported by a company town of homes, a store, a church, and a school. In winter, with snow pressing in from all sides, the furnace felt less like a ruin and more like an exposed framework of early Appalachian industry: stone, labor, and isolation.

The approach to the furnace required snowshoes, with nearly a foot of powder covering the Clay Furnace Trail. The route descended gradually through the woods along a broad but rocky path, its surface muted by snow and shadow. At under a mile round-trip, the hike was short but instructive, offering a glimpse of how quickly the forest absorbs the marks of industry once activity fades.

Later, I followed ridgelines toward Coopers Rock Overlook, passing stonework and infrastructure constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, whose projects in the 1930s shaped much of the forest’s present form. Near the rim, the Almost Heaven Swing stood empty, its chains shifting slightly in the wind near the edge of the Cheat River Gorge. Gusts swept across the exposed rock and kept me back from the edge. Snowshoeing along the cliffs slowed the journey and sharpened it, turning a familiar destination into something more austere, defined by weather, history, and restraint rather than spectacle.