New River Gorge National River is one of more than 400 National Park areas that protect natural and cultural treasures and tell the nation’s stories. The National Park Service arrowhead symbolizes the purpose of the National Park System: protecting for today and preserving for the future the nation’s natural and cultural heritage. Its elements represent animals, plants, landscapes, and water within an arrowhead that represents cultural resources. Beyond the Gorge’s obvious beauty, its aquatic and forest ecosystems, the stories of early peoples, its industrial past, and the wisdom drawn from these make it, along with other protected public lands, vital to the nation. It preserves the core of a globally significant forest, contains the most diverse flora of any river gorge in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, and provides essential habitat for endangered species of plants and animals.