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Section of Blue Ridge Parkway reopens between Blowing Rock and Linville Falls

Image shows signs on the Blue Ridge Parkway showing the road is closed
Paul Garber
/
WFDD
Signs mark where part of the Blue Ridge Parkway off Bamboo Road in Watauga County was closed in May.

Blue Ridge Parkway officials have opened a 12-mile stretch of the historic roadway between Blowing Rock and Linville Falls.

The section had been closed due to a landslide and debris from Helene.

The campground, picnic area and visitor center at Linville Falls remain closed.

Parkway officials found nearly 60 landslides across 200 miles after the storm, and work will continue in three phases.

The first phase addresses 48 miles of the Parkway that includes the Blowing Rock to Linville Falls work, which is now open. The remaining repairs are expected to be finished this fall.

The second phase will repair five miles of landslide damage south of Linville Falls. That work is planned to wrap up in the fall of next year.

The final phase will address 23 damaged sites between Little Switzerland and Mount Mitchell.

Parkway leaders urge visitors to respect the areas that remain closed because they are still dangerous.

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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