 
|
Signature Sponsor
November 3, 2024 - A narrow dirt road between the tiny mountain community of Bat Cave and the larger tourist mecca of Chimney Rock has taken on outsized meaning for area residents and on social media.
A group of West Virginia coal miners built the road a week ago. Over three days, they used equipment owned by their employer, Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc., to cut a path along the Rocky Broad River.
The single-lane dirt road provided the first vehicle access to several homes since the remnants of Hurricane Helene washed away U.S. 64/74A between the two communities. As they worked, the men encountered residents who hadn’t seen people in weeks, said Mark Staton, who owns the building that houses the Bat Cave post office and helped host the miners.
“They’re running across people that haven’t had any help; they haven’t had power; they haven’t had water, they haven’t had accessibility,” Staton said in an interview. “So if it wasn’t for the coal miners here, we would still be in the same spot we were in one week after the storm.”
The work of the miners was widely documented with videos and posts on TikTok and other social media. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice posted a photo on X of the men, saying their deeds were a reminder of why the state’s miners are “the absolute best in the world.”
“These men ran to the aid of North Carolina and are helping rebuild the road from Bat Cave to Chimney Rock — which some thought was impossible,” Justice wrote. “Thank you for pulling the rope together and being amazing!”
Tennessee-based Alpha declined to comment about the work of its employees. Through Staton, so did the miners.
On social media, their accomplishment feeds into a narrative of government incompetence and Appalachian bootstrapping. The “West Virginia Boys gettin’ her done” and “WV boys made it happen,” posts say, while government agencies dither.
“This is American exceptionalism right here!,” one person posted on X. “The government can’t hold a candle to what private citizens can do!”
In reality, the N.C. Department of Transportation has been busy in the Rocky Broad River valley.
The miners were able to get their equipment down to Bat Cave on U.S. 74A, which NCDOT and its contractors have partially rebuilt. The washed out U.S. 64 bridge at Bat Cave that connects the community to Hendersonville reopened late last week.
NCDOT expects to complete a temporary two-lane gravel road between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock in four to six weeks, said spokesman David Uchiyama. For the foreseeable future, Uchiyama said, use of that road will be limited to local residents and business owners, emergencies and people involved in construction.
Flood took road and ground beneath it
The stretch between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock will be especially hard to rebuild. The rushing floodwaters that carried away homes and businesses took not only the pavement but also the earth underneath it, leaving nothing but a wide, rocky riverbed in many places.
The process of rebuilding U.S. 64/74A began at the east end in Chimney Rock, where village administrator Stephen Duncan has been watching its progress. Countless trucks full of rock have passed through town to create the gravel roadbed to Bat Cave.
“These bulldozers they’ve got in there, including two from the U.S. Army, they’re bigger than houses,” Duncan said in an interview. “I didn’t know they made bulldozers that big. It’s amazing.”
Duncan drove to Bat Cave on the road the West Virginia miners built and understands why it’s being celebrated. But he said their path is only suitable for all-terrain vehicles and high-clearance trucks and SUVs and can’t be compared to NCDOT’s road, which can support everything from passenger cars to heavy equipment.
He said the village fire department has had to rescue at least one vehicle that bottomed out on the road the miners built.
“A car can get through a good bit of it, but there are at least two spots where there’s a dip and a creek running through them,” he said. “Unless you have a very, very elevated vehicle, you might get stuck.”
Some media coverage has overstated the miners’ accomplishment, including a New York Post article that said they had moved a mountain “to reopen a 2.7-mile stretch of Highway 64 between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock.”
To head off any misunderstandings, the fire department in nearby Edneyville posted on Facebook that when someone says the roads to Bat Cave are open it means they’re “somewhat passable” and usually no more than a single lane of dirt or gravel.
“To say they are open is not a good representation for what most think of,” the post read. “Again, these roads are open enough for residents to access their homes and for emergency vehicles.”
‘We hear that you need a road’
Staton said the West Virginia miners initially came to Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene to help look for bodies. Through word of mouth among private volunteer groups, they were eventually referred to residents of Bat Cave.
“They said, ‘Hey, we’ve got these guys, we hear that you need a road,’” Staton said. “’They’ve got big equipment. These are the people who can do it. Can we send them down to see what they can do?’”
NCDOT is hesitant to criticize the work of the miners. Spokesman Uchiyama said the department appreciates their intentions but notes the differences between what they built and what NCDOT is doing.
“Their creation of a path — not enough to support vehicular traffic — south from Bat Cave occurred on private land and beyond the purview of transportation officials,” Uchiyama wrote in an email.
He added that NCDOT and its contractors are building the two-lane gravel road “where it should be located” along its former path, avoiding private property.
The gravel road between Bat Cave and Chimney Rock will be temporary. NCDOT expects to award a contract by the end of November to design and build a permanent road in the approximate location of the old one. The department expects that work, which also includes relocating the river in many places, will take two to three years, Uchiyama said.
For now, the view looking down U.S. 64/74A from the Bat Cave post office is little changed in the month since Helene. The road simply disappears, the pavement either washed away or covered by several feet of mud and debris.
Staton says he thinks the publicity around the West Virginia miners has brought new attention to the plight of Bat Cave that may speed government help. In any event, their work has been an emotional lift.
“We need little victories. We need hope. We need something to build on,” he said. “And that’s what they gave us.” |
|