Some of the earliest images to come out of Western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene were of the Chimney Rock area, where the surrounding small towns had completely washed away. In the state of North Carolina, there were 108 verified storm-related deaths, and in the days following the storm, the first thing the staff of Chimney Rock State Park did once they could enter the park was raise the flag on the mountain to half-mast. “We had first responders, officials, and rangers in Chimney Rock Village look up and they could see the flag, and that was hope,” said superintendent James Ledgerwood late last month as a group assembled beneath the 535-million-year-old monolith rock for which the park is named. The gathering marked the park’s official reopening—and the moment when the park again flew the flag at full mast.
“This is an iconic park for not just Western North Carolina, but all over the Southeast and beyond,” says Emily Walker, the park’s director. “Many of our visitors have been coming here for generations.” Helene’s unprecedented rain caused flooding that washed away the park’s entrance bridge, destroyed the Old Rock Cafe, and damaged the winding road up the mountain. The elevator up to the rock flooded, and landslides swept away retaining walls.
Now, after nine months of cleanup and repair, the park is welcoming people again via a reservation system. From the top of Chimney Rock, a seventy-five-mile panoramic view of the Hickory Nut Gorge awaits, overlooking the recovery efforts continuing below.
“The village of Chimey Rock ended up in Lake Lure,” says Carol Pritchett, mayor of Lake Lure. “The speed and the force of the water coming down the Broad River and its tributaries was something none of us could have imagined.” Landslides, coupled with the overflow of the river, damaged or swept away most of the village’s infrastructure. Fully a third of the forty-six businesses were destroyed. In neighboring Lake Lure, the raging waters damaged the dam and knocked out the wastewater treatment plant, and lakeside homes filled with silt. “Our firefighters and our police force went door-to-door over and over until they identified where every single person was,” Pritchett says. “So many people came and volunteered and worked shoulder to shoulder.”…