When Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, the Flowering Bridge of Lake Lure was one of many structures swept away in the waters—and with it, a section that served as a beloved pet memorial. In 2022, artist Amy Wald created the Rainbow Bridge, a place for people to attach the collars, leashes, and tags of their lost pets, with painted paw prints across the bridge representing a pet waiting for their owner on the other side. Thousands of collars accumulated, and they were all lost in Helene.
But over the course of recovery efforts, workers and volunteers started to find them. Wald accepted each piece, cleaned it, and posted a description of the color and name so the owner would know if their tribute had been recovered. At the end of September, 101 more collars appeared, bringing the total up to 237. “We have a local company removing sediment from the lake, and two workers scooped sand out and there was a piece of railing, three or four feet long, with all these collars on it,” says Kathy Tanner, board chair of the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge organization. “In the hole, there were more loose collars.”
The workers gathered them up and brought them to Tanner, who at the time was working with volunteers to replant a group of plants—day lilies, hydrangeas, and other perennials—that community members had dug out of the sand and rescued in the aftermath of the storm. “We were just blown away that it happened on the same day we replanted those survivor plants,” Tanner says, “just before the anniversary of the storm.”
ABC13 News reported the story of one owner who found out her three dog tags were among those recovered. “I spent a few minutes blowing up every picture to see if I could see our collar,” she says in the segment. “I felt silly even thinking that was a possibility…but there they were.”
Although the Flowering Bridge has not yet been rebuilt, there is a place for the sentimental collars to go in the meantime. A YouTube personality and scrap metal collector based in South Carolina called Papa Scrap heard about the loss, and last year he drove to Lake Lure and built a small replacement bridge. “We’ve absolutely loved it. I’m so glad people have a place to put their collars,” says Dana Bradley, the parks, recreation, and lake director of Lake Lure…