Amanda Keith could feel Hurricane Helene approaching. Standing with her husband James on the front porch of their mountain hotel, the NuWray, they listened as silence fell over the town square of Burnsville, North Carolina.

It was September 26, 2024.

“It was quiet out there,” Amanda said, describing that late September evening. She was reminded of the tornadoes she experienced growing up in Kansas. “It was that calm before the storm feeling.”

Amanda Keith and I were sitting together in the sunny bakery of her restaurant Carriage House Sundries, conveniently located just behind the NuWray Hotel. It was exactly six months to the day since that eerie evening, and the landscape couldn’t feel more different. Spring had arrived with a flourish of birdsong in the Appalachian mountains, and Amanda was telling me about the hotel’s newly restored, full-service restaurant.

In 2024, the NuWray received a $50,000 grant from the Backing Historic Small Restaurants Grant Program (BHSR) —a joint program between the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express. In more ways than one, the grant had come at a pivotal time during the restoration of the hotel restaurant. The funds allowed the Keiths to complete vital exterior work around the windows and porch areas, which in turn allowed them to serve their community after a natural disaster.

Amanda’s instincts about the incoming storm that evening on the porch were proven correct. By noon the following day, her new home region of western North Carolina had been devastated by the effects of Hurricane Helene.

All Roads Lead to the NuWray

The 191-year-old NuWray Hotel, once known as the “Grande Dame of Burnsville,” survived the hurricane. “The sun came out,” Amanda said, “and almost immediately there were people filling the square.”

Left without electricity, Wi-Fi, cell service, or running water after the storm ended, residents of Burnsville went to their town square to locate one another and find answers. More precisely, they headed straight to the NuWray.

“I had the same instinct to walk to the NuWray, after the winds died down,” I told Amanda. In retrospect it was a little uncanny—almost as if the hotel had been the unspoken pre-arranged meeting spot for the entire town.

My own property in Burnsville had suffered flash flooding, and for a few chilling minutes I thought my car would be swept away in a river of mud and debris. The critical moment passed, and a few hours later I would learn how lucky I’d been compared to many others in the area. The walk from my house to the town square was brief, but it still felt like an eternity until I saw the NuWray Hotel standing tall across the grass.

The three-story white inn with its enormous gable portico, brick pillars, and sweeping veranda is impressive under normal circumstances. But on the day of the hurricane, I swear it glowed like a beacon. People were already gathering in the hotel’s lobby and resting in rocking chairs on the veranda. Many held phones aloft to try and locate a signal.

That evening in the darkened kitchen of Carriage House Sundries, Amanda and James made stacks of sandwiches for their neighbors by the light of their phones. Their fridges were full of meat, cheese, and condiments, after all.

Pancakes After the Flood

By Saturday morning, the full extent of our situation had begun to hit. We were cut off from the rest of the world by destroyed roads and downed cell phone towers. Word of mouth spread that no one could get in or out of our county.

It dawned on me gradually that I couldn’t be sure where my drinking supply of potable water would come from. Exhausted from spending the morning trying to find cell service to call my family, I walked to the NuWray and joined a crowd of people.

I was handed a plate of breakfast made by the staff, who encouraged me to sit down wherever I liked. The lobby had been beautifully restored, with gleaming wood walls and floors, a green velvet settee, and a roaring fire in a stone fireplace that took up almost an entire wall. The paper plate held hot pancakes with whipped sorghum butter. It was so delicious that my eyes welled up.

This would be the first of many down-to-earth acts of kindness from the Keiths and NuWray staff. As reports of fatalities reached us and survivors hiked into town from the hills and valleys, the Keiths continued to rise to the occasion. The rocking chairs on the veranda were replaced by giant whiteboards filled with the names of the missing. The NuWray was now a central hub for information about emergency services.

“Because we had completed enough of the restoration work beforehand and had hotel rooms open, we were able to serve free community meals out of the NuWray lobby at a time when food was scarce and the town's water system had been decimated,” Amanda wrote in her final report to the BHSR grant program.

The NuWray’s neighbors jumped in to help.

“Once we went through everything we had, people just started showing up with food out of their fridges and freezers because they heard we were cooking,” Amanda said. “It was the same kind of community effort that happened everywhere. People converged and chipped in how they could.”

By the 1970s, the NuWray had developed a national reputation for a unique dining experience, thanks to the theatrical personality of innkeeper Rush Wray. He woke his guests with a loud bell at eight every morning, and breakfast was served on the long dining tables at eight-thirty on the dot. No exceptions. He played people into the dining room with an old-fashioned music box called a Reginaphone.

The NuWray is currently enjoying a revival under its new owners, thanks to the Keiths’ painstaking restoration of the hotel and restaurant. While the historic family-style dining experience will be saved for special occasions, they hope to embrace the way the NuWray has been a gathering spot for locals and for visitors, blurring that line of separation to bring the two groups together.

Amanda said, “The NuWray has always been a gathering space for local people, so visitors get a real sense of the place. It’s been like that for hundreds of years. It’s still the case today."