The 11 Best Swimming Holes in West Virginia

Mountain Lake Club is a private recreation club built around 55-acre Lake Shannondale, about 13 miles from Harpers Ferry, and it reopened around 2020 after roughly two decades sitting dormant. The swimming happens at a designated beach with a roped-off shallow section for small children and open water beyond it for adults, and plenty of visitors bring their own inflatable tubes to float the afternoon away.

It works as a proper swimming hole with extras: fishing, boating, and a Lakeside Bar & Grill with Blue Ridge Mountain views from the patio. There is no lifeguard anywhere on the property, so all swimming is at your own risk, and kids need a parent or guardian with them. Day passes are cheap enough that it makes an easy summer outing, with the beach open daily from late May through Labor Day.

Trout Pond Recreation Area sits in a mountain hollow of the George Washington National Forest and centers on two adjacent lakes. Trout Pond itself, a sinkhole-formed lake billed as the only natural lake in West Virginia, is managed for brook trout fishing, while the swimming happens next door at Rock Cliff Lake, a 17 acre impoundment with a white sand beach in the day-use area.

It is a family oriented swimming hole by design, with no hike or scramble to reach the sand, though there is no lifeguard on duty. Just know you are truly out in the forest here, so do not count on cell service.

Milleson's Walnut Grove is a working livestock farm turned seasonal campground, wrapped around a bend of the South Branch Potomac River at the end of about 3 miles of country gravel road in Hampshire County. Campers and day-use visitors swim right off a natural pebble beach, and the same stretch of river handles tubing, canoeing, and fishing.

This is not a managed swim beach, and the owners are upfront about that. There are no lifeguards, and river use is at your own risk, so it suits people who are comfortable in an unsupervised river setting rather than families looking for a roped-off swimming hole.

Beech Fork Lake is a 720-acre Army Corps of Engineers reservoir tucked into the oak and hickory hills of western West Virginia near Lavalette, with more than 30 miles of forested shoreline. The designated swimming hole here is Stower's Branch Swimming Beach, a lake-shore swim area with a shaded deck sitting alongside the Beech Fork Shelters picnic grounds and a marina.

It is set up as a family day-out spot, with playgrounds and picnic shelters right at hand. Just know this is open reservoir water rather than a contained pool, and no source confirms lifeguards or a roped-off shallow zone, so keep an eye on the kids. The adjoining Beech Fork State Park runs a separate seasonal pool if you want a more controlled option for little ones.

Sutton Lake Beach sits at the Bee Run Day Use Area on a 1,440-acre Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Elk River, ringed by about 40 miles of shoreline and rolling hills of oak, hickory, poplar, and cherry. Officially it is described simply as a large beach, and it makes this stretch of the Elk River a sanctioned lake to swim in.

Know what you are getting: this is open-water lake swimming, not a roped-off pool. The marina next door says swimmers can go in right off the boat from anywhere on the lake, which tells you how informal it is, and it also means you are sharing the water with motorized traffic.

Blue Bend has been a place to swim since the 1930s, when the Civilian Conservation Corps built a stone-lined swimming reservoir right into Anthony Creek and flanked it with two paved beaches. That CCC craftsmanship gives this Monongahela National Forest swimming hole a more controlled, wade-in feel than a wild creek pool, and the creek water is, in Recreation.gov's words, nice and refreshing.

The setting is classic rustic parkitecture, all local wood and stone under a forest canopy, with the historic log pavilion still standing as the centerpiece. It is drive-in accessible right off WV Route 16, so no hiking is required to get wet.

Glade Creek Falls is one of those spots the National Park Service itself calls a local swimming hole, which is about as good an endorsement as you can get. The tiered sandstone waterfall spills into a natural blue-green plunge pool, and a regional lodging guide has gone as far as calling it the best swimming hole in the New River Gorge.

You earn it with a walk, though. The pool sits about a mile up the Glade Creek Trail from the campground trailhead, following an old railroad grade through the woods. There is no swim beach, no lifeguard, and no built anything, just cold creek water below the falls, so treat it like the wild spot it is.

Bee Run Recreation Area Beach is the Corps of Engineers' designated swim beach on Sutton Lake, a long, narrow flood-control reservoir on the Elk River that stretches 14 miles through the hills of Braxton County. It sits about 3 miles off I-79 near Flatwoods, which makes it one of the easier lake beaches to reach in central West Virginia.

This is a developed reservoir beach rather than a secluded swimming hole, part of a day-use complex with a boat launch, marina, and playground. The lake hosts motorized boating and water skiing alongside the swimmers, so it has a busy, everybody-on-the-water feel in summer.

Bulltown Swim Area is the designated swimming hole on Burnsville Lake, a 968-acre Army Corps reservoir on the Little Kanawha River in Braxton County, West Virginia, and it is an easy detour off I-79 via Exit 67 northbound or Exit 91 southbound. The beach anchors the Bulltown Day-Use Area, within a mile of the Bulltown campground and right beside a Civil War battle site and historical village.

The lake runs about 9.5 miles long with 30 miles of shoreline and a 14-foot average depth at summer pool, which the Corps holds from April through October before drawing it down for winter flood storage. The beach gets periodic bacteria testing by the county health department and was briefly closed in July 2026 after poor results, so it pays to call the resource office before a visit.

Bulltown Swim Beach is the official, sanctioned way to get into Burnsville Lake, a Corps of Engineers reservoir on the Little Kanawha River in the wooded foothills of central West Virginia. This is a maintained lake to swim in rather than a hidden swimming hole, part of a developed complex with a beach, boat launch, and day-use area.

The location adds a wrinkle you will not find at most lake beaches: it sits right next to the Bulltown Historic Area, a preserved Civil War battle site that hosts reenactments twice a year. The campground is about a mile away, so day swimmers get their own lot near the water.

Big Bear Lake beach is the swim spot on a 35-acre private lake at Big Bear Lake Camplands, a family camping resort in the mountains of Preston County, West Virginia, that has been running since 1972. The resort pitches the beach for swimming, fishing, and lounging, and families with little ones get a bonus: the smaller 4-acre Baby Bear Lake nearby is set up for rafts, sandcastles, and gentler water.

One thing to know before you plan a trip: this is not a public swimming hole. The resort stopped allowing day-use visitors in 2024, so the lake is only open to registered campers, property owners, and their booked guests. If you are staying there, the beach comes included, surrounded by roughly 1,000 acres of wooded mountain terrain and nearly 50 miles of trails.