There is a bridge in West Virginia.

It's in the New River Gorge National Park, and this bridge is the stuff of Instagram photos

insanely pretty stock images.

It's this long steel arch, the longest in the western hemisphere, and it connects the

bluffs on either side of the new river.

The river cuts and twists through these beautiful forested mountains, and the bridge towers

above it, almost 900 feet above the river below.

It's one of the tallest bridges in the country.

On the third Saturday in October, when the autumn leaves are at their most stunning, the

highway that runs across the New River Gorge Bridge is closed, and the bridge becomes

the exclusive domain of pedestrians.

You can walk across and gaze out over the edge.

But that is not the only thing that happens on that singular day known as bridge day, because

if you think just looking over the edge would be vertigo inducing, wait until you hear

what else bridge day has to offer.

That's the sound of a catapult, launching a human being equipped with a parachute, luckily,

nearly 900 feet into the river below.

This is the real draw of bridge day, because that happens over, and over, and over again.

I'm Dolan Thoris, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange and

quite a bull and wondrous places.

This small town big story episode is produced in partnership with GoUSA TV, and today we're

headed three hours from Charlotte, North Carolina, into the Appalachian Mountains to this beautiful

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