Home Care In Black Mountain, NC

Norfolk Southern announces plans to rebuild historic Old Fort Loops

The Valley EchoMay 27, 2025

The sights and sounds of trains chugging through the Swannanoa Valley are expected to return, following a May 20 announcement of plans to rebuild the historic Old Fort Loops that connect the Piedmont to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Norfolk Southern Corp., which operates the winding 16-mile stretch of tracks that have been out of service since Tropical Storm Helene last September, expects to complete the work this winter.

The rail company, which owns and operates nearly 20,000 miles of lines in 22 states, east of the Mississippi River, resumed freight service from Eastern Tennessee into Asheville on its AS Line, May 20, following multiple storm-related projects in an area between Newport, Tennessee and Asheville.

“Engineering teams rebuilt 128 locations totaling over 13 miles of track…” the release stated. “(We) utilized over 160,000 tons of aggregate materials and cleared over 2,000 trees. The restoration work, which has all been privately funded, reflects Norfolk Southern’s commitment to the economic recovery of the region.”

The Old Fort Loops, completed by the Western N.C. Railway in 1880, incorporate a series of seven tunnels and 9 miles of track to navigate the 1,100-foot climb from Old Fort to Ridgecrest. The project, which relied on the forced labor of prisoners, represented an engineering feat that connected the previously isolated mountains to seasonal visitors and a growing economy on the eastern side of the state. Passenger service through the Swannanoa Gap, widely used throughout most of the 20th century, ceased in 1975.

Acquired by Norfolk Southern in 1999, the stretch of railroad tracks was “severely damaged” during the natural disaster.

“Until now, the company had been conducting an extended evaluation of line damage for restoration,” Norfolk Southern stated in the release. “The line rebuild is expected to be completed this winter.”

Resuming freight service into Asheville was “a positive step” in recovery efforts in Western N.C., according to Governor Josh Stein.

“This development will help businesses regain their livelihoods and strengthen our supply chain so that WNC can build back stronger,” he said.

Hurricane Helene dealt a devastating blow to a string of mountain towns last September, sweeping away roads, businesses, and entire communities and, tragically, claiming 107 lives in North Carolina alone. The storm hit the idyllic Appalachian refuge of Black Mountain, just outside Asheville, right when it usually would get an influx of travelers: “We lost our leaf season, and boy, did that hurt,” says Danielle Topping, the longtime general manager turned owner of the Black Mountain mainstay restaurant Que Sera.

But the resilient residents of Western North Carolina have spent the months since then banding together to rebuild. This summer, Black Mountain and the area’s other communities need your enthusiasm and investment—showing up with a few dollars to spend will help take care of a town that will surely take care of you right back. “To everyone who cherishes our mountains, trails, and waterfalls,” Topping says, “please come back and rediscover the beauty and excitement of WNC. We’re here, and we’re ready.”

Downtown Black Mountain is delightfully walkable, and you just might stumble into your new favorite antique store or art boutique. One sure bet for finding regional art: Mountain Nest Gallery. For some mountain music, dip into White Horse Black Mountain, a venue that hosts “pay what you can” shows.

For something slightly more strenuous, the newly reopened Lookout Trail rewards hikers with panoramic views of the Seven Sisters, a gorgeous section of the Appalachian Mountains. Lake Susan and Montreat Trails have been restored thanks to the teamwork of the Montreat Conference Center and volunteers, and the Lake Susan loop is an easy rise-andshine stroll for those who like to hike with a coffee in hand.

Start your day with a seasonal latte from Dripolator, a charming storefront that has been roasting its own beans since 1999. Just up the road, Blue Ridge Biscuit Company serves sweet and savory breakfasts, among them the Smoky Mountain Brook biscuit, with smoked trout and caper dill cream cheese.

For lunch, stop into Cousins Cuban Cafe, where owners and employees donated food and dished up free empanadas in the days following Helene. Louise’s Kitchen, set inside a circa-1904 Victorian mansion, became a supply center to outfit residents who had lost everything, switching their dining tables for folding tables full of shoes and clothing. It’s now a hopping café once again, serving turkey bacon cheddar sandwiches and breakfast all day.

A cherished gathering spot for farm-to-table dinners, Que Sera has returned to full-service across the restaurant and oyster bar; don’t miss the blackened North Carolina redfish. Foothills Meats’ downtown smashburger-and-hot-dog joint the Grange is a casual option with picnic tables, local suds on tap, and sandy spots for kids to play. Next door, you’ll find its sister business, a recently opened fine-dining option that pays homage to Helene’s impact, dubbed Hell or High Water.

Black Mountain is replete with small-town charm, and few establishments capture it better than Peri Social House. Opened last August, the six-room inn claims the title of “smallest boutique hotel in North Carolina.” The owners, Kathryn and Trevor Rudisill, converted the former home from its most recent life as an event space into cozy lodgings with plush white bedding and lounges aplenty. When Helene hit, Trevor and guests were flooded in together for days. He took in as many stranded people as he could, even hosting an impromptu wedding reception in the backyard for a couple whose plans the stormwaters had swept away. Nowadays, find that strong community gathering in the front room around the coffee bar by day, and around the pizza food truck and cocktail bar by sunset.

Discover more must-visit towns in G&G’s 20 Dreamy Summer Weekend Getaways here.

Black Mountain Home for Children serves abused, neglected and abandoned children across western North Carolina. Leaders said the community's support has been critical. The organization provides care that starts at birth and extends through college and beyond.

“We want to make sure that they live in a happy, healthy home," said Jimmy Harmon, president of the nonprofit. "They're raised with people who care for them and love them and we do all that in a Christian setting. We do that through residential care, foster care that's based in the community. We have an independent living program for kids over the age of 18 and we also have a lifelong living program for kids who have intellectual disabilities that we're going to need to follow the rest of their life and help them.”

Their campus houses roughly 170 children, with several buildings spread across the area. Part of that campus was severely damaged during historic flooding from Helene in September 2024.

“I think people tend to forget that right before the storm hit, we had just experienced about 13 inches of rainfall,” Harmon remembered.

He said rainfall triggered a landslide that impacted several buildings on the Black Mountain Home for Children's property, including some housing for college students, who were part of an apprenticeship program.

“One of the young people who was with that group looked out the back window of the dining hall and saw the trees on the mountain just walking down the mountain,” Harmon remembered, describing the trees falling as the ground hurtled down the incline. “[The students] started running towards the door opposite of where the landslide was coming and they probably made it five steps before it impacted the building.”

Despite the destruction, no one was seriously injured.

“We're blessed,” Harmon said. “We have 100 kids on our main campus with the kids that we serve, the foster parents, their children and our staff, about 350 people that we're responsible for, and it's amazing that there wasn't a scratch on anybody's head other than a pretty severely sprained ankle.”

In the storm's aftermath, Harmon said the organization has relied on support from across the Southeast. He said they have church connections in Knoxville, Nashville, Jasper, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and up the East Coast. The nonprofit worked with those churches to set up distribution centers where people could bring supplies.

The path to recovery has been slow, especially as rebuilding takes place on top of the very landslide that disrupted the campus.

“We're standing on a landslide, right? And so working through that process is slow, but at least there is progress in that, and that's a blessing in itself,” Harmon said. "We know that there's a lot of dynamics at play and everything's kind of like an onion and so we just peel back one layer at a time and we take it one day at a time and, to me that's all we can do."

Still, Harmon remains focused on the mission of the home, which includes residential and foster care, an independent living program for young adults, and a medically fragile home for children with health conditions like fetal alcohol syndrome or neonatal drug exposure.

Even amid chaos, Harmon said he’s seen moments of peace and hope.

“We stepped out of our community room, we looked down the valley and the most beautiful double rainbow I've ever seen was over the valley,” he remembered the moments immediately following the flooding. “That was God showing us His promise.”

That moment not only stuck out to Harmon, but also to one of the children staying at the organization.

“I asked her, ‘What do you do on the bad days?' She said, ‘I remember the rainbow,'” Harmon described a conversation with the child.

He also said that it serves as a symbol he will always remember.

“In the midst of chaos, there are blessings,” he said. “And so the blessings that have come out of this: you're here. People are seeing our ministry in a new light. People are seeing that there are places that can help kids in foster care and have amazing outcomes and so there will be blessings out of the chaos and I think our job is to recognize those, identify them, and be thankful for them.”

Despite ongoing cleanup and infrastructure repairs—including road reconstruction and wildfire mitigation—Harmon said he believes the region will emerge stronger.

“We still have a lot of mess to clean up and we will for a long time,” he said. “But I do believe that the people of western North Carolina are going to be much stronger at the end of this.”

A list of the country's best art installations in 2025 contained a number of North Carolina locations, including an Asheville-area location in the top 15.

The list, created by art company Rivers Wall Art, included a broad range of entries from gardens to arts centers to sculpture parks, and beyond. The list, which consisted of 125 entries, was compiled through data from an online panel survey of 3,002 respondents.

Here's what we know about the WNC pick that made it to the top 15, plus the names of each N.C. site on the list, and the top 10 across the country.

Black Mountain College Museum Site

The Black Mountain College Museum site made it into the top 20 best art installations in the country at No. 13. The college museum honors the history and legacy of Black Mountain College, which the museum's website describes as "an experiment in community and arts-centered education near Black Mountain, NC, open from 1933 until 1957."

With free admission, visitors can view historic and contemporary exhibitions, a variety of events and more. One previous event included "Music for Modernist Shapes," an installation and performance complete with folded paper costumes, light projections and live music. A recent "fashion/puppet show" featured an improvised live scored orchestra and themed costumes.

Best art installations in North Carolina 2025

Though Black Mountain was the only Western NC location on the list, it was far from the only N.C. location included countrywide. In fact, the state received special mention from the list's writers for the amount of times it appeared, calling its art "wildly varied but consistently grounded in local identity."

In total, five N.C. art installations made it onto the list of 125, three of which were in the top 20:

Best art installations in the U.S. 2025

The overall top 10 art installations in the nation, including one in N.C.:

Iris Seaton is the trending news reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at [email protected].

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. — Nine months after Hurricane Helene washed away the main pipe that carries most of this mountain town’s drinking water, the community is looking for a permanent fix that could cost millions.

Public Works Director Jamey Matthews said the community normally leans on two sources.

“Actually, 40% of the water to the town of Black Mountain [relies on local wells],” he said. “The other 60% we actually purchase from an outside entity because of growth at this time.”

That outside line — a transmission main from Asheville that also serves neighboring Swannanoa — snapped during the Sept. 27 storm.

“Both of those pipes had washed completely out of the ground,” Matthews said. “We basically lost everything … all the water that we had out of all of our storage tanks.”

The outages stretched across roughly 10,000 customers.

“It’s a lot of stress knowing that you’ve got 10,000 people, you know, without water,” Matthews said.

Swannanoa resident Jerry Brigman remembers the rapidly rising water, followed by the uncertainty of turning on the tapwater.

“It was literally like turning on the faucet and just brown creek water coming out,” he said.

Brigman’s family went nearly two months before service returned.

“We were without water from the 27th of September to right before Thanksgiving,” he said. “So for me and my family, we just kind of camped out. We was able to get bottled water brought in to drink, to cook with, even to heat and take showers with.”

Nine months later, many residents are still rebuilding.

“I mean there’s still people living in campers,” Brigman said. “You know, homes completely gone, land completely gone … they wouldn’t even be able to build back to where they were at.”

Town crews fought the outage with little more than hand tools and borrowed machinery.

“We lost our building that we actually work out of. We were sleeping in break rooms, we were sleeping in our vehicles and we basically worked around the clock until we got this system back going,” Matthews said.

A temporary splice restored flow around the middle of October, according to Matthews. Followup lab work later showed “since Helene, we have tested clean,” he added.

While the town has clean water, Matthews said they are working on a long-term fix.

“It also relies a lot on funding, too, because it’s very expensive to get a well up and going completely,” he said.

Engineers have drafted a proposal for new wells and a looped distribution line designed to keep water flowing even if another section fails. The price tag is expected to run into the millions, money local officials hope to secure through state and federal grants this winter.

Volunteers still arrive most weekends to haul debris and swing hammers, but Brigman doubts the valley will shake off Helene any time soon.

“We’ve had the volunteers to come through, but I still think we’re going to be seeing the effects of Helene for many, many years to come,” he said.

Town leaders aim to break ground on a reinforced pipeline next spring. Until then, Black Mountain’s water security rests on rented pumps — and a community that now stores extra jugs in the pantry, just in case.