Crews have opened a new bridge over Kentucky Creek near Avery County High School in Newland, giving drivers and school buses a permanent crossing nearly two years after Hurricane Helene tore out the original structure. The span replaces a culvert that flooding from the September 2024 storm washed out along with the roadway beneath it.
The project traces back to the earliest days of the storm's aftermath, according to a North Carolina Department of Transportation post detailing the work. NCDOT contractors installed a temporary pipe culvert repair on Avery High School Road in early 2025, restoring basic traffic over the creek while engineers designed and Vannoy Construction built the permanent bridge that has now opened. Engineers ultimately chose to replace the original culvert entirely with an open-span bridge rather than reinstall a similar pipe structure.
Why Open Spans Are Replacing Culverts
That shift from culvert to bridge reflects lessons learned across the region since Helene hit. Structural engineering evaluations following the storm demonstrated that open-span bridges increase water flow capacity and prevent floating debris from clogging channels during extreme mountain flooding, according to VHB. Culvert clogs were identified as a primary driver of road embankments washing out across Western North Carolina during the storm.
The new bridge is intended to improve resiliency against future flooding events, per the same NCDOT account of the project. Avery County High School sits adjacent to the creek, and Avery County Schools operates a transportation fleet that logs more than 319,000 miles a year across the district's mountainous terrain, according to Avery County Schools.
A Storm That Reshaped the Region's Infrastructure
Hurricane Helene was the deadliest and costliest tropical storm in North Carolina history, claiming 108 lives statewide and causing an estimated $59.6 billion in total damages and recovery needs, according to the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management. The storm damaged or destroyed 818 state-maintained bridges and forced roughly 1,400 road closures across Western North Carolina, prompting NCDOT to launch the largest transportation reconstruction effort in its history, as reported by Associated Construction Publications.
As of March 2026, 18 months after the hurricane, NCDOT had repaired nearly 590 bridges, fully replaced 26 bridges, fixed 74 damaged culverts, and completed repairs at 87% of the more than 9,450 storm-damaged sites across the region, the agency reported. Some of the region's most complex projects remain years from completion; NCDOT has estimated that repairs to Interstate 40 through the Pigeon River Gorge will cost up to $2.8 billion, with a full reopening projected for late 2029, according to WVLT.
Private Bridges Remain a Local Struggle
While state-maintained crossings like the one at Kentucky Creek are reaching completion, the damage to private infrastructure in Avery County has proven harder to resolve. Helene damaged or destroyed at least 130 private bridges in the county alone, stranding mountain residents and forcing some families to build makeshift footbridges or rely on ATVs for access, according to CBS News. Those crossings fall outside NCDOT's standard maintenance schedule, leaving property owners to navigate the state's Tropical Storm Helene Private Road and Bridge Program, which the North Carolina Department of Public Safety established to evaluate and help fund repairs to non-state roads, culverts, and bridges.
NCDOT's work in Avery County continues on a rolling basis beyond Kentucky Creek. The agency shifted traffic onto a temporary culvert on Curtis Creek Road in July 2026 while construction began on another permanent structure, and last year Hoodline reported on a separate Elk River bridge rebuild elsewhere in the county. Together, the projects illustrate a countywide effort to move from emergency patches to permanent, flood-resilient crossings nearly two years after Helene reshaped the High Country's roads.
