Clay stopped by Natural Bridge State Park in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The park is known for a 215-foot-tall limestone arch or natural bridge. The site captivated Thomas Jefferson so much that he purchased it from the King of England in 1774 for about $160 in today’s money.
Jefferson wrote rapturously of Natural Bridge in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785):
“Few men have resolution to … look over into the abyss. You involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet, and peep over it. Looking down from this height about a minute gave me a violent headache. If the view from the top is painful and intolerable, that from below is delightful in an equal extreme. It is impossible for the emotions, arising from the sublime, to be felt beyond what they are here: so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing, as it were, up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is indescribable.”
After being in private hands for many years, Natural Bridge became a state park in 2016.
