After Helene's destruction, a mountain town reliant on fall tourism wonders what's next
Freddie Pell helps lift a vintage wooden chair off the sidewalk and back inside his art gallery. A thin dark line on the wall — about a foot up from the floor — shows how high the water rose when Tropical Storm Helene came barreling through on Friday, Pell said. In the days after Helene razed much of western North Carolina, some store owners in downtown Boone have a lot of cleanup to do and don't know if they'll see much business at all for the foreseeable future — a critical problem for a town of about 19,000 people that relies on tourism, especially in the fall.
