The U.S. Forest Service has awarded a $240 million contract to an engineering company to rebuild the Virginia Creeper Trail. The biking trail was heavily damaged last year during Hurricane Helene, and the forest service is hoping to reopen it next fall.
The winning contractor is Kiewit Corporation, an employee-owned construction company, with headquarters in Georgia and Nebraska.
They’ll begin this month rebuilding 17 miles of the Creeper Trail in Southwest Virginia, and 30 damaged or destroyed trestle bridges. Flooding during Helene was so powerful, it washed out the land where some of these former railroad bridges once stood. Before Helene, it’s estimated that over 200,000 people rode the Creeper Trail each year.
The money to rebuild the trail was including in a funding package passed by Congress last December. $600 million dollars was set aside for several projects within the national forest in Virginia, including this one.
The upper half of the trail between Damascus and Whitetop Station is closed. The other half of the Creeper Trail from Abingdon to Damascus remains open.
