Masks will be required at Bridge Day this fall. Tens of thousands of people typically show up on the third Saturday of October to watch parachutists, zip liners and rappellers on the 876-foot-high New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville. Masks will be required at the festival regardless of vaccination status, and social distancing must be observed whenever possible.
The Bridge Day Commission said festivalgoers typically line the center of the bridge shoulder to shoulder trying to get a good look at parachutists catapulting themselves off the nation’s third-highest bridge. Social distancing will be next to impossible on the crowded bridge itself, but organizers said it will be required on the festival’s perimeters. The sharp rise in statewide virus cases over the past month prompted several other popular events to be canceled, including last weekend’s Italian Heritage Festival in Clarksburg, the Mothman Festival Sept. 18 in Point Pleasant and the Mountain State Forest Festival in early October in Elkins.