The town of Damascus is hosting its annual Trail Days festival May 16-18, when thousands of outdoor enthusiasts and Appalachian Trail hikers converge. This small Southwest Virginia town was devastated last September during Hurricane Helene, and much of the Virginia Creeper Trail was washed away.
Standing in downtown Damascus, David Phillips recalled the chaos of last September’s flood. “Where the creek actually is, it looked like the Colorado River going through,” Phillips said.
Phillips works at Adventure Damascus Bicycles, one of several bike rental businesses in town. Helene destroyed their main source of income—a biking trail called the Virginia Creeper Trail was heavily damaged.
“And at the end of the week, Michael, our owner, he called everybody in and laid everybody off,” Phillips explained, remembering what it was like a week after Helene, in early October. “He’s like, ‘guys I think that’s it. This is just completely done. 27 years.’ We were all rather surprised. I’m even choked up about it.”
Before Helene, it’s estimated that over 200,000 people rode the Creeper Trail each year. And rental companies like Adventure Damascus shuttled most of them to the top of a nearby mountain, to ride downhill. But that half of the route suffered the worst of the damage.
Then, a few weeks after the storm, the lower half of the trail reopened, and Adventure Damascus and other businesses began shuttling bikers to Abingdon.
“And it was like a glimmer of hope,” Phillips said. “Though, we still didn’t know what the new normal was gonna be like. It’s just, so many people ride the upper half of the trail.”
Now, eight months after Helene, tourists are returning. Karen Krenik from Minnesota was riding the Creeper Trail with a group of friends, as part of a stop in Damascus between visits to Shenandoah National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This was Krenik's first time in Virginia, and she said the Abington to Damascus portion is lovely.
“And there’s some wildlife that you can see too, and I loved the bridges, the tall wooden bridges,” Krenik said.
Nate Owen from Bristol said this was his first time to ride the lower portion of the trail. There is more peddling because the ride from Abingdon to Damascus is slightly uphill, but the views, he said, are better.
“All the scenic-like photogenic spots on the Creeper Trail are on the lower half. A lot of people don’t realize that,” Owen said. “So I think it’s prettier.”
Kevin Bounds from North Carolina was visiting with his granddaughters and his grandson. “And they are avid bike riders,” Bounds said. “They like to going to a park or a greenway somewhere to ride bikes. This is gonna be their first adventure with a 17-mile ride.”
His grandson Isaac pointed out, about his grandfather, “this is his first time riding 17 miles on a bike as well."
Damascus town manager Chris Bell said lodging this year is down by 45 percent, a relative rebound, he said, because numbers earlier this year showed a dip of 85 percent. The U.S. Forest Service, which owns a portion of the Creeper Trail, changed the rules to now allow e-bikes on the Abingdon stretch, as a strategy to try to bring more people to visit.
“We’ve noticed the town is busier than I had anticipated,” said Scott Little, who owns a shop in Damascus with his wife called Green Cove Collective. For nine years, they had been stationed along the Creeper Trail near Whitetop, selling clothing and snacks to bikers. But with that portion of the trail closed, they decided to move their business to Damascus.
Little said they hope to reopen their other location in a few years once the rest of the trail is rebuilt and keep their Damascus store open as well. He said traffic has been fairly steady since they opened in Damascus. “So, people are really coming in from other communities, like Abingdon, Bristol, Kingsport, and other towns in North Carolina.” Little said.
Homes are being rebuilt too. Eight families in Damascus and surrounding communities are getting completely new homes, thanks to a group called Trails to Recovery. Mennonite volunteers are donating their labor, and 10 percent of the funding is from FEMA. That agency has also awarded more than 116,000 to help the town of Damascus. The town has submitted more funding requests for hundreds of thousands more that are waiting on review from FEMA.
The U.S. Forest Service has also pledged to rebuild the top half of the Creeper Trail, though the agency did not respond to Radio IQ’s questions about their timeline.
The owner of Adventure Damascus, Michael Wright, said they’re hoping they can hold out until the rest of the trail is fixed.
“I’m pleased with how things are progressing,” Wright said. “I hope it can hold on and grow for the next couple of years while they start to rebuild the trail.”
Spring is the beginning of the tourist season in Damascus. The town has several new events planned throughout the summer and fall, to draw visitors back, and keep businesses afloat.
