News

With hope and faith, Chimney Rock rebuilds

Shipping containers lining the temporary road through Chimney Rock Village express a message of hope. [PHOTO BY OLIVIA JARMAN]

By OLIVIA JARMAN, Published: December 5, 2025

Fourteen months after Hurricane Helene devastated Hickory Nut Gorge, residents of Chimney Rock Village are rebuilding both physically and emotionally, with the same spirit that helped them survive the storm.

Hurricane Helene, the late September storm that became Western North Carolina’s costliest disaster, ripped through this small tourist town with sudden, unstoppable force. In minutes the Rocky Broad River left its banks, carved a new course and tore through shops, bridges and homes.

Mayor Peter O’Leary still remembers the first time he saw the damage. He’d been away with his family at Tybee Island, Georgia, where the same storm brushed past, when pictures began to flood his phone. When he finally drove home two days later, the village was unrecognizable.

“It was just incredible to see,” he said. “It's still hard for me when I drive through and look at everything, to imagine that this actually happened. I still kind of think I'm going to wake up someday and it'll be back to normal.”

In the days before Helene struck Sept. 27, 2024, back-to-back storms had soaked the mountains, saturating the ground. The steep slopes of the Blue Ridge escarpment funneled the runoff straight into the gorge.

More than 1,300 landslides were recorded just across the Hickory Nut Gorge and Blue Ridge Mountains during and after the storm, said Brad Daniel, an environmental educator and outdoor leadership expert at Western Carolina University.

“When soil gets saturated, it literally forms a slippery surface and anything that’s on top of it — trees, rocks, anything — slides off of it,” Daniel said. “That played a major role in why we had so many landslides.”

​In Chimney Rock, the landslides and floodwaters took out homes, businesses and the familiar landscape that was beloved by residents and visitors alike.

“We had six buildings here that were completely gone, and the 20 feet of dirt that they were sitting on is just totally gone,” O’Leary said.

When the storm cleared, the town found itself cut off, as every bridge in or out had been destroyed. For the first six days, the only way to get resource supplies to the area was by helicopter.

In response, crews built a temporary road that is still in use today. Beside it, three white shipping containers painted “Faith,” “Hope” and “Love” remain as a visible reminder of the following months.​

The recovery effort quickly became a collective one across the village as business owners rolled up their sleeves.

Shopkeeper Cristina Kulak said her store was filled with about five feet of water, mud and debris during the storm that U.S. Army soldiers eventually helped shovel out.

​With local shops unable to reopen right away, business owners adapted by setting up temporary pop-up stores in the nearby town of Tryon.

“We all became family,” Kulak said. “All the shopkeepers and business owners, we just were coworkers essentially in this tiny little bubble experiencing all this together.”

Out of that experience came a partnership. Kulak joined forces with another family whose business, Rock Creations, had been destroyed along the river. Together, they opened The Finderie, an eclectic gift shop, rebuilding with wood from fallen trees from the hurricane.

Kulak said the experience reshaped how she viewed her town.

“It’s such a gift to grow those relationships together,” she said. “I don’t know if that would have happened outside of the storm. We’d gone through the mud and we’d met.”

She said she still sees neighbors volunteering or checking in on one another.

“People are so good when it comes down to it,” she said. “We had people walking because they couldn’t drive in just to help.”

For James Ledgerwood, a veteran park ranger and superintendent of Chimney Rock State Park, the hardest part was not just the destruction, but what came after.

“I’ve been here for 15 years,” he said. “So seeing it, hearing from my rangers, ‘It’s gone,’ I say, ‘What?’ and he says, ‘Everything is gone.’”

Overnight, Ledgerwood’s role transformed from teaching and leading park programs to managing large-scale construction and recovery projects.

“It’s so hard,” Ledgerwood said. “You wake up and that’s what you’re dealing with. ‘Do I stay here? Do I go somewhere else?’”

What makes him stay?

“I’m still finding joy, that’s the honest answer. But seeing people succeed, seeing the people I know rebuild, get [the park] open — for me, that was the best thing: to open this place back up.”

​The recovery, he said, has changed how he approaches his work. Rebuilding will take time, and he has learned that patience and careful planning matter more now than ever.

​Education and Trails Manager Margeau Travers, who has worked at Chimney Rock State Park for over a decade, said the staff’s connection to the landscape motivated them to move quickly once the danger had passed.

​“We all really love and cherish this place,” she said. “That helped a lot because we all wanted to get in and get everything cleaned up as soon as we could.”

The park reopened in late June 2025, with the Skyline Trail following in August after additional cleanup. During the closure, rangers continued to engage the community.

​“A lot of schools that usually come to us wanted us to come to them because they still wanted us to be a part of their year,” Travers said.

​Despite these efforts, visitor numbers still remain lower than usual. Chimney Rock State Park typically sees around 400,000 visitors a year.

​“We have a lot of road closures still impacting people getting to us,” she said. “Once those roads open up, we should be able to welcome people back a little bit easier.”

​Reopening, she said, felt like returning home. “It definitely kind of feels like being home again,” Travers said. “Everybody’s still in recovery mode in the village, but it feels enough.”

The town's long-term rebuilding focuses on the Raise the Rock Recovery Action Plan, a strategy designed to guide construction, relocation and infrastructure improvements. Its purpose is to restore and revitalize the village by “rebuilding public infrastructure while creating a foundation for future private investment.”

​“We’re in the process of planning and designing and rebuilding the village,” O’Leary said. “Everything’s in the works, and the recovery is underway.”

​The plan emphasizes moving buildings out of flood-prone areas and reinforcing the new road network.

​“We’re trying to relocate them in an area that did not flood,” O’Leary said.

​He estimated that it would take eight to ten years for most of the rebuilding to be completed.

​“Early on, I figured out the only way to do this is just day by day,” he said.​

Much of the current work focuses on stabilization, repairing infrastructure, monitoring landslide-prone slopes and ensuring the temporary road remains safe for residents and visitors. Environmental crews continue to assess the Rocky Broad River corridor for long-term restoration while state engineers plan permanent fixes for damaged bridges and roads.

O’Leary credited outside help for much of the recovery and estimated that more than 5,000 volunteers stepped up to assist. He said a faith-based disaster group from South Carolina organized hundreds of volunteers and that an Amish community, Great Needs Ministry from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, sent about 50 people each Monday for several months to work on rebuilding projects.

​“Without them, these buildings would still be full of mud,” he said.

​Those volunteers helped clear debris, rebuild storefronts and repair damaged homes in nearby Bat Cave. O’Leary said many of the village’s shops were restored with donated materials and leftover debris from the storm.

​Kulak saw the same spirit of generosity. She said residents and business owners continued to show up for one another long after the cleanup crews left. Many worked for weeks without pay, relying on community donations and shared supplies to reopen.

​Daniel said the cooperation between local leaders, state agencies and volunteers has become a defining part of the region’s recovery after Hurricane Helene.

​“One of the most beautiful aspects of what happened during that time is you saw people holding together and working together and everybody mattered,” he said. “No one was left behind.”

Chimney Rock Village has only about 125 full-time residents, but on a typical summer day between the village and the state park, as many as 8,000 to 10,000 people fill the gorge. O’Leary said that balance, being a small town that serves thousands, makes recovery even more important.

​“I always tell people, ‘We play a lot bigger than we are,’” O’Leary said.

​Some in the village said one of the hardest parts, even months after the storm, was hearing misinformation about the response efforts. Rumors online often painted a picture that did not match what they were living through. Others said the flood of conflicting stories made it harder to share the real progress that was happening quietly, one cleanup at a time.

​“People were saying we weren’t getting help,” Kulak said, “but I’d been here since day one, and all I saw were good people showing up.”

​She added that she hopes stories like Chimney Rock’s reach beyond the region.

​“The internet doesn’t always shine on the greatest aspect of things,” she said. “I hope things change for the good stories to get the most attention because that’s what I’m trying to do: shine light into all of this.”

​While residents focused on sharing the good that came out of the storm, Travers said the park staff are now focusing on preparedness and flexibility.

​“We definitely weren’t prepared for that,” she said about the hurricane. “But we’ve always had plans in place in case of emergencies, and our staff followed perfectly what we could have done beforehand.”

​Communication was one of the biggest early challenges. “Going forward, we definitely kind of know what to expect from major disasters,” she said. “Keeping our plans and keeping to those will help us in the future.”

​She said the main takeaway from the past year is the importance of adaptability.

By September 2025, a year after Hurricane Helene, Chimney Rock Village was far from finished. Still relying on the single makeshift road, some shops have reopened, all of the state park trails are back in service, and schools and locals are starting to return.

​The road detours, the debris, and the scars on the river and land still remain. Trucks are still moving out hazardous waste from the riverbanks and damaged properties every day to reduce environmental risks and stabilize the land.

​And the community continues to adapt.

​For many here, that means showing up, whether to clear debris, greet visitors or keep an eye on the rising river when it rains. The community that weathered Helene together is still defined by the same thing that got them through the worst of it: a willingness to keep going.

​O’Leary, who has been mayor for two decades, knows the recovery will not be quick. But when he looks down Main Street now, he knows what to say.

​“The old Chimney Rock just lives in our memory now,” O’Leary said. “It’s gone. But we’re working hard on rebuilding and making it better than it ever was before.”

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Olivia Jarman is a student journalist with UNC Media Hub. A senior at UNC at Chapel Hill, she is majoring in Journalism and Media and Hispanic Studies.