Little River Canyon National Preserve is a United States National Preserve located on top of Lookout Mountain near Fort Payne, Alabama, and DeSoto State Park. Created by an act of Congress in 1992, the nearly 14,000 acre (57 km²) preserve protects what is sometimes said to be the nation's longest mountaintop river, the Little River. The Canyon was historically called "May's Gulf," "gulf" being a common term throughout the Cumberland Plateau for this sort of feature (e.g.