Gauley Bridge Civil War Battlefield

Here New and Gauley rivers unite to form Great Kanawha River. Piers still stand of old bridge destroyed by the Confederate troops in 1861. Here Thomas Dunn English, author of the ballad, "Ben Bolt", wrote "Gauley River". Gauley Bridge is a town in Fayette County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 614 at the 2010 census. The Kanawha River is formed at Gauley Bridge by the confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers. Two miles to the southeast of Gauley Bridge, in Glen Ferris, West Virginia, is Kanawha Falls, a popular stopping point on Midland Trail Scenic Highway. Gauley Bridge was close to the site of the Hawk's Nest incident, in which hundreds of lives were lost in the 1920s and 1930s.