In Va., a Bridge's Grandeur Comes Naturally

I confess that the first time I visited Natural Bridge as an adult, I fully expected to be unimpressed. After all, things that loom large in childhood tend to shrink with the years, a good 25 of which had passed since my last youthful saunter beneath that vaulting arch.

I was wrong.

When I got my first grown-up eyeful of the bridge, I said, "Wow, it's big."

Big, it is. Neither words nor pictures can really do justice to the experience of standing beneath Natural Bridge and looking up. From the pathway that runs under it, it's 215 feet to the topside. It makes you feel dizzy and rather small. And that's not a feeling lost with familiarity either. Dean Ferguson, who is the effusive director of interpretive programming and who year-round can generally be found under the bridge answering visitors' questions, says, "I am always just humbled to witness and to be able to share something like this."

Or as Thomas Jefferson put it, "The rapture of the spectator is really indescribable."

Though it's certainly the main attraction, the bridge is only part of the reason to visit Natural Bridge, Va., which, at about 200 miles from Washington, is a nice escape from the city. You go, really, for the whole experience: the history; the natural wonder; the kitsch (witness "Foamhenge" on a ridge as you approach from the north on Route 11); the nature (it's on the Virginia Birding and Wildlife Trail and sits at the edge of the George Washington National Forest); and, more than anything, the pleasures of unscripted authenticity. When so many "attractions" these days are homogenized, corporatized, focus-grouped over-stimulation zones, Natural Bridge isn't like the way things used to be, it is the way things used to be, genuinely unassuming, friendly and welcoming.

On-site attractions include Natural Bridge Caverns, a wax museum with a self-guided factory tour (ever wondered how they make those disturbingly too-real wax replicas of the famous and the infamous?) and the Haunted Monster Museum, which is the most 21st-century of the attractions here.

Of course, you'll want to visit the bridge. It is the work of two inexorable forces -- water and time -- and Cedar Creek still flows beneath it, wearing patiently away at the gorge it has carved over an unfathomably long stretch of years. Possibly where there is now a bridge there was once the roof of a cavern, which collapsed, leaving only this narrow vestige, conveniently just wide enough to carry a two-lane road, once known as the Old Valley Pike, now Route 11.

Ask Ferguson about the Old Valley Pike and you'll tap into his encyclopedic store of knowledge on the role this region has played in history. Archaeological records suggest that native Americans occupied this land as early as 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. George Washington surveyed the bridge. Thomas Jefferson once owned it. It is a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Cedar Creek Nature Trail winds under the bridge and alongside the creek, and a short walk past the bridge brings you to the Monacan Indian Village, a historically accurate re-creation staffed by interpreters that include Monacan Chief Kenneth Branham and members of the Shawnee, Cherokee, Seneca and Monacan nations. A centerpiece to the village -- besides the incompletely stripped animal bones hanging to dry -- is a dome-shaped wigwam, framed by arched saplings and sheathed with some 35,000 cattails. Raised sleeping and storage shelves inside surround a center fire, which in summer makes the interior more than close but would function to keep it dry. The interpreters, often at work on the activities that traditionally would have been part of daily life -- tending the garden, curing hides, making tools, weaving baskets -- are a ready source of information and details, including the fact that a village would never have been built in so vulnerable a location as the bottom of a gorge.

"It would have been a death trap," Branham observes equably.

Another destination in the area is the Natural Bridge Caverns, a living limestone cave (open March through November). You'll descend the equivalent of 34 stories into the earth, amid the steady drip of water, which continues to build limestone formations at the creeping pace of about a cubic inch every century; together, the bridge and the caverns remind human observers that we are each but a passing flicker in the span of geological time. Seize this instructive opportunity to assure the kiddies that their yearning passion for an Xbox 360 also shall pass (yeah, good luck with that).

In the evening (with a schedule that varies by season), the bridge is the setting for "The Drama of Creation," a sound-and-light pageant depicting the Old Testament story of the seven days of creation. "The Drama of Creation" premiered in 1927, and candidly, with its swelling orchestral music and sonorous narrator, it does hearken to a more irony-free era.

And speaking of harking back to another era, round out a weekend at Natural Bridge with the Sunday country buffet in the Colonial Dining Room -- with signature dishes including spoonbread and Virginia country ham, along with cold salads, fried chicken, rolls, cobblers, cakes, pies and more. You may need an appetite as big as the bridge.

NATURAL BRIDGE, VA. Routes 11 and 130, off exits 175 and 180 on Interstate 81 south from Interstate 66 west.http://www.naturalbridgeva.com. 800-533-1410. Single tickets for Natural Bridge include bridge, nature trail, Monacan Indian Village and "The Drama of Creation": $12 adults, $6 children; $11 adult and $5 children for hotel guests. Open daily 8 to dusk. Customized lodging-and-attraction packages and combination attraction tickets available. Check for schedules on attractions.

Lodging at the Natural Bridge resort through Nov. 12, $70-$119 weeknights, $75-$130 weekends. Summerhouse Cafe on the Cedar Creek Trail offers lunch and dinner through October; Gift Shop Cafe & Deli serves lunch through November; Colonial Dining Room and Red Fox Lounge open all year.

NATURAL BRIDGE CAVERNS 45-minute guided tour. $10 adults, $6 children; $9 adults, $5 children for hotel guests. Open daily 10 to 5, March through November. Closed December-February.