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ACE Adventure Resort is West Virginia's largest whitewater rafting outfitter. In 2009, ACE reported 37,924 rafting users to the state's Department of Natural Resources (which regulates rafting companies), representing about 27% of all rafting guests industry-wide.
ACE's rafting user numbers have increased steadily since 1999, when the resort took 25,255 users rafting on the New and Gauley rivers.
ACE Adventure Resort is North America's largest outdoor adventure resort, and one of the largest in the world, according to the Travel Channel's "Extreme Resorts" program. ACE Adventure Resort comprises 1,500 acres along West Virginia's New River Gorge.
ACE runs whitewater rafting trips on the New River and on the Gauley River. ACE is the only outfitter that runs rafting trips on the Gauley through spring, summer and fall (most companies run the river during fall Gauley Season, when dam-released water flows are guaranteed).
ACE hosts numerous events throughout the year, including endurance races such as the XTERRA Triathlon, Odyssey Adventure Race, and an all-military Wilderness Challenge, and countless family reunions, school and church trips.
ACE Adventure Resort's employee base is seasonal, with as many as hundreds of employees during the summer peak.
ACE Adventure Resort's camping and lodging can host as many as 1,500 guests at a time.
The property that ACE now occupies was once a favored hunting and fishing retreat of President Harry S. Truman. The former strip mine surrounded by wooded forest was bought by ACE owners in 1988. There were only three buildings on the property when ACE took residence: the house Truman stayed in when visiting, an A-frame for the Secret Service contingent and a small lodge structure near one of the property's five lakes. The lodge was expanded to a present day dining facility.
ACE began operation in 1980 out of a rented room at the old Chuckwagon Motel, where the two original owners met up with vacationers before raft trips. The company bought four rafts from Wildwater Expeditions Unlimited, the first whitewater rafting outfitter to make a trip down the Gauley River. Original ACE owner Ernie Kincaid began kayaking on the New River as a teenager in 1969, one year after the first rafting company successfully made it down the river, and would follow rafters down in his kayak.
In 1988, ACE started building a full-scale resort on its present day property. ACE has pushed to innovate in the outdoor vacation industry ever since. At that time, the company was known as ACE Adventure Center. ACE aggressively expanded activity offerings and trip variations, including being among the first rafting companies to offer self-bailing boats in the 1990s. ACE also constructed West Virginia's first zip line canopy tour, opened to the public in 2008. In addition, ACE owns and operates an outdoor gear retail outlet, the ACE Adventure Gear Shoppe in the New River Gorge.
Adventurers have been rafting West Virginia whitewater for the past 40-plus years, and have watched as the industry exploded into a multi-million dollar industry and then began to wane in the 2000s.
Whitewater rafting in West Virginia started with a few paddlers on the New River in canoes. Paul Davidson and Bob Burrell started to canoe mountain rivers in 1965, and were soon introduced to closed boats and the Cheat, Yough, New and Gauley Rivers by eastern paddlers such as John Sweet (for whom the Gauley rapid Sweet's Falls is named).
The early pioneers of the now professionalized rafting industry in West Virginia were college-age kids looking for fun and thrills, and were the first to put a raft on the river.
The family most associated with early whitewater rafting in West Virginia and the eastern United States were the Dragans, led by entrepreneur Jon Dragan, along with brothers Tom and Chris, and Jon's then-girlfriend and later wife Melanie (who still works for ACE Adventure Resort). They left the Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania for the New, which at the industry's peak would have about 20 companies working the river. Chris Dragan was 15 when they started taking friends down the river in 1968; the oldest among them was 24 at the time.
The family launched Wildwater Expeditions Unlimited, hiring guides and housing them at Thurmond. Each guide was asked to write a research paper on history local to the New River Gorge, meant to provide them stories to entertain guests on trips down the river.
The Dragans' company in 1968 was only the third of its kind in the United States. They started with a few pickup trucks and four Army surplus rafts that they used to maneuver friends down the river. At the time, the banks wouldn't give them the $4,000 needed for the equipment, so they borrowed the money from family.
In those early days, guides often had to pull over to scout the best possible route down the river. There were no landmarks charted or named rapids, and so the Dragans named the rapids according to their character, after geographical location or some memorable event. The next two decades would see an industry boom, and in 1994 upwards of 200,000 people paddled whitewater in West Virginia, pumping millions of dollars into local economies.
By 1991, a Whitewater Advisory Board composed of whitewater rafting company officials, private paddlers, private citizens and consumers, fishery officials and the National Park Service was created to deal with whitewater issues including setting the number of commercial passengers that could be allowed on West Virginia rivers to prevent overcrowding.
In 2009, ACE Adventure Resort purchased Wildwater Expeditions Unlimited. In 2010, Wildwater still operates as an individual rafting company, based at ACE Adventure Resort's facilities.
ACE Adventure Resort is West Virginia's largest whitewater rafting outfitter. In 2009, ACE reported 37,924 rafting users to the state's Department of Natural Resources (which regulates rafting companies), representing about 27% of all rafting guests industry-wide. 
The property that ACE now occupies was once a favored hunting and fishing retreat of President Harry S. Truman. The former strip mine surrounded by wooded forest was bought by ACE owners in 1988. There were only three buildings on the property when ACE took residence: the house Truman stayed in when visiting, an A-frame for the Secret Service contingent and a small lodge structure near one of the property's five lakes. The lodge was expanded to a present day dining facility.
Adventurers have been rafting West Virginia whitewater for the past 40-plus years, and have watched as the industry exploded into a multi-million dollar industry and then began to wane in the 2000s.
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