Chimney Rock Village, NC – The bright colors sign along S-Curve Mountain Road attracts visitors to the Gemstone mine, the “#1 attraction in Chimney Rock Village!” But another sign, at the main door dotted with the store mud, tells a different story.
“We will be closed on Thursday 9-26-2024 due to imminent climate“, Read. He promised to reopen the next day at noon, what the weather allows.
That imminent climate were the remains of Hurricane Helene. And that reopening has not yet arrived.
The storm Back in the mountains of North Carolina last September, killing more than 100 people and causing an estimate $ 60 billion In damage. ChimneyA village of about 140 calls like this for the geological wonder of 535 million years that supports its tourism industry, was particularly beaten.
Eight months later, the mine, like most surviving businesses in the picturesque main street of the town, remains an open construction site. An intermittent sign in the Cabaña on Guard on the city line warns: “Closed road. Only local traffic”.
The mayor of the village, Peter O’Leary, had predicted optimistic that the center would open on time for the weekend of the day of the fallen, the traditional beginning of the summer tourist season. Now he realizes that that was too ambitious.
“We had established that date as a goal, at first,” he said, sitting in the main room still stripped of the general store of his Bubba O’Leary. “But always try to remind people, you don’t always hit the goal. Anyone who has fired a gun or arc and arrow knows it, you don’t always hit the goal.”
The Broad River, which gave the restaurants and inns that covered its shores its commercializable water views, He left his courseCarving the foundations and sweeping the bridge to the Chimney Rock State Park. O’Leary said that about a third of the city’s business were “totally destroyed.”
Several have gone forever.
In the north of the city, everything left of the Bayou Boyou Boyou Chimney Rock Country Eatting Park is a pile of twisted metal, jirones and confused train cars. A yellow and cracked yellow carousel that the children of the owner Bill Robeson themselves once balanced precariously in a pile of rubble, his mouth open towards the sky.
At 71, Robeson, who also lost a two -story building where he sold popcorn, pizza and souvenir tits, said he does not have his heart to rebuild.
“We realized the dream and everything,” said Robeson, who has been arriving at Chimney Rock since he was in diapers. “I hate that I had to go as I was. But, you know, life is short. You can’t reflect on that. You have to move on, you know?”
At the other end of the city, Carter Lodge boasted “balconies overlooking the river.” Much of the rear of the 19 room hotel now hangs in the air, an angry red-gross wound on the floor that once supported it.
Just a month before Helene, Linda Carter made the latest loan payments in repairs A 100 -year flood In 1996. Contractors estimate that it will cost $ 2.6 million to rebuild.
Then, the widow said she is waiting to see how much the federal government will offer so that the lot becomes a flood mitigation zone.
“I just don’t have it in me,” Carter said, who lived at the hotel. “I am 74 years old. I don’t want to die and leave my borrowed children. I don’t want to go through the pain of reconstruction either.”
But others, like Matt Banz, still think that Chimney Rock is worth the risk of future anguish.
Florida’s native fell in love with a Fudge store here during a vacation more than 30 years ago. Today, he and his family have four businesses in the city, including the Gem mine and the riverwatch bar AND Grill.
“The day after the storm, we do not even ask ourselves if we were going to rebuild,” said Banz, with the workers by rebuilding the cover in front of the river in the new feet of cement. “We immediately knew that we were not going to let it go.”
O’Leary, Banz and others say that federal relief has been slow. But volunteers have filled the holes.
On the street, the Pensylvania Amisho workers gathered a mold before pouring a new reinforced base for the Broad River Inn, among the oldest businesses in the city. The river undermined the rear and deleted the neighboring miniature golf course.
“We could definitely have not done what we are doing without them, that is safe,” said Inn Kristen Sottile co -owner. “They have brought so much willpower, hope, as well as many other things to our community.”
The Amish are working in a concert with Spokes of Hope, a non -profit Christian organization formed after Hurricane Florence, That hit the Carolinas in September 2018.
Jonathan Graef and his brothers bought the Best View Inn at the end of 2023 and were in the middle of renovations when Helene hit. They have been flooded twice since then, but the new beams and framed the built Amish workers have had.
“He is really trying to break down,” said Graef, whose property limits with what is left of Bayou Billy Park. “But our spirits are high, our hopes are high and nothing will prevent us from opening this place.”
Throughout the city, the hammer and mountains ring is mixed with the sizzling of welding and the course of rubble removal trucks.
The workers place sewerage lines. A temporary steel bridge to the state park, which replaces the ornate stone and the concrete section that washed, should be ready soon, O’Leary said.
“In a normal year, they easily have 400,000 visitors who come to the park,” he said. “That is really the raffle that brings people here.”
A recent night, Rose Senehi walked through Main Street, stopping to look at the windows of the stores to see how much progress had been made.
Twenty -two years ago, the novelist stopped in the city to buy an ice cream cone. As he licked, he crossed a small bridge, climbed a staircase rickety to a small house, looked around “and saw that mountain.”
“Within an hour I signed the contract and bought it from nothing,” he said, his eyes illuminated. “I’ve never been in this city. But I knew this was what I wanted.”
The bridge is gone. This is that ice cream shop. But Senehi said there is more in this place than shops and sweets.
“There is something in this area that is simply convincing. The mountains. The green. It’s simply beautiful,” he said. “It will definitely come back. And it will not be the same; it will be better.”
O’Leary said he believes that some main street companies will be open at some point in this summer. The Council is looking for property property that can be leased or sold to business owners.
“I can see progress on all fronts,” said O’Leary, who came to a park job 35 years ago and never left. But he warns that the recovery will be slow.
“We do not want everyone to come at the same time, but we want people to visit and be patient with us,” he said. “This is a long reconstruction. But I think it will be worth it.”
