🏞️Park and preserve West Virginia has rolling green hills, soaring mountains, and diverse wildlife, but until late in 2020, it did not have a national park. Though it was home to some rivers and historic sites managed by the NationalParkService, it did not have a full-fledged “park”—large areas of land that protect an array of natural and historic features. This changed in December 2020 when the United States Congress passed a bill designating the New River Gorge as a national park and preserve. The image above shows the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in southern West Virginia, which is a little under 60 miles away from American mathematician Katherine Johnson's birthplace in White Sulphur Springs. Johnson was first hired in the aeronautics industry as a “computer” in 1952. She calculated and analyzed the flight paths of many spacecraft during her more than three decades with the U.S. space program, including the calculations that sent nasaastronauts into orbit in the ...