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Work begins on Ashe County bridge replacement on Blue Ridge Parkway

Map showing the location of Laurel Fork Bridge on the Blue Ridge Parkway and the detour that will be in place as the bridge is replaced. Image courtesy of National Park Service.

Two High Country sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway are getting big-budget makeovers. 

Work has started to replace the Laurel Fork Bridge in Ashe County. The nearly 550-feet long structure was built in 1939, and parkway officials say it's at the end of its lifetime. 

The project will shut down the bridge area and a detour is expected to be in place for the next two years.

The other High Country project on the parkway involves repaving work for a 75-mile stretch between Grandfather Mountain and Doughton Park.

That work will be staggered over the next three years so that the areas along the way will have continuous access.

Combined, the two parkway projects will cost an estimated $127 million. The federal Great American Outdoors Act is providing funding for the work.

Last year the Blue Ridge Parkway attracted almost 16 million visitors. 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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