Jeffrey Burroughs strolled among crooked trees and clumsily leaning chain-link fences on a recent Thursday afternoon in Asheville’s lower River Arts District. Nearby, heaps of flood-damaged antiques dotted the ground outside gaptoothed buildings that had previously housed hundreds of working artists.

“It’s nice that at least it’s green,” Burroughs, president of the River Arts District Artists, said of the bent trees. “It was really depressing through the winter and the fall.”

Burroughs, who uses they/them pronouns, is not joking when they say they have taken just two days off in the more than 10 months since Hurricane Helene, the deadliest hurricane to strike the mainland United States since Katrina in 2005, ravaged wide swaths of the Southeast, leaving at least 250 people dead.

The storm overwhelmed Asheville’s French Broad River, submerging much of the once robust River Arts District in as much of 24 feet of water, caking it in layers of mud and destroying the life’s work and financial pipeline of hundreds of artists. Burroughs remembers watching from a nearby bridge as a winery they once frequented pinballed and crashed through buildings.

“People were prepared because this area has flooded” in the past, Burroughs said. “They moved everything up. Nobody anticipated second floors would flood. That’s not something you even conceive. All of a sudden, it was like a lake opened in the middle of our town.”

Amid a staggering loss of lives, a city’s cultural vitality shifts to the background. But for Asheville, that vibrancy had come to define the Western North Carolina town as the city became a popular tourist destination and home to many who valued an artistic life outside a major coastal metropolis.

Over the past few decades, the River Arts District blossomed into that sprawling artistic epicenter as antiquated buildings transformed into bustling studios, classrooms, galleries and showrooms.

The district’s recovery is seen as a crucial step in regaining a steadiness of income and the sense of normalcy for the many who lost so much in the storm.

“The business owners in the River Arts District have been working their tails off to rebuild since Hurricane Helene struck and I am making sure the state works with that same urgency to support their recovery,” said Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, who recently toured the district on a bike.

The River Arts District housed nearly 750 artists before the hurricane. “You’re just immersed in art,” said Davis Perrott, a woodworker who recalled waking up from the storm to a sound like someone forcefully slamming themselves against his window. “I’m sure there are other are areas like it, but I haven’t seen it.”

The upper portion of the district, which houses Burroughs’s jewelry store, returned fully in January. A few spaces have reopened in the lower portion of the district, which is closer to the river and suffered the most flooding.

About 350 of the displaced artists are working again in the district. Some are actively involved in the continuing recovery process, waiting to return to the home that welcomed them.

Others have decided not to return. For them, the risk of another storm outweighed anything else.

Riverview Station was a major hub in the district, once hosting hundreds of artists, including the 14,000-square-foot ceramics space, the Village Potters Clay Center. That was before “26 feet of water went through and wiped us out,” said Sarah Wells Rolland, its founder. “The building is just sitting there like an old ruin now. It was something to behold before the flood.”

The center was home to studios, showrooms, a gallery and classrooms where workshops were held. Wells Rolland said that $500,000 worth of equipment was lost in the flooding.

“I never even entertained going back,” she said. “It wasn’t even a viable possibility for multiple reasons.”

She added: “I believe it’ll all wash away again.”

Instead, Wells Rolland opened a new center near the arts district. While her business has returned, she is still searching for her creative spark.

“I’ve lost a lot of people, and it was just like that,” she said. “Just numb is what I felt. I didn’t have any ideas. Still, almost a year out, I’m a highly creative person, but I still don’t feel like I have that creative energy yet.”

As the district returns in fits and bursts, it could provide a blueprint for how other communities ravaged by increasingly destructive natural disasters can recuperate their livelihoods. Those affected have been depending much more on smaller networks of supporters and volunteers than on any government channels.

Mark and Jacqueline Oliver operate Foundation Woodworks, which featured the work of dozens of local artists and a community wood shop. The Olivers lost more than $100,000 worth of equipment and had contemplated bankruptcy before deciding to try to rebuild on the same spot.

On a recent weekday, Mark Oliver expected two volunteers to assist with installing insulation. By 10 a.m., several others had unexpectedly shown up. On another occasion, he received a call asking if he had enough work for 70 college-age students the next day.

“I had to get extra volunteers to help with the volunteers,” he said.

By mid-July, the Olivers had about two-thirds of their internal walls finished. They had come this far with the help of volunteers, faith-based organizations and grants from a mixture of places like Mountain BizWorks, a local nonprofit. They said they needed an additional $20,000 to $30,000 to feel comfortable enough to reopen in September, as they had planned.

“In terms of anything else, we haven’t received it, and I’m not sure who has,” Oliver said.

Even in the weeks right after the storm, the district was trying to find creative ways to mark its presence. There was RADFest last November, which allowed participants to stroll through studio offerings. The next month, a “Love Asheville From Afar” pop-up exhibition opened in Atlanta’s Ponce City Market.

The overall goal is not to recreate exactly what previously existed, but to make a better version. Leslie Rowland, who paints under the name L Rowland and previously worked from Riverview, opened Joan Awake, a gallery, to show the work of some female artists affected by Helene.

Dana Amromin and Beth Kellerhals’s ButterPunk, a coffee shop and bakery, was one of the first new businesses to open in the district since Helene. “Right up until we opened we were still mopping and sweeping,” Amromin said.

Marquee, an art gallery that hosted more than 300 artists, is anticipating a September reopening, with other businesses in the lower district.

“We’re able to tweak the things that we wished we’d have done the first time before we opened and now we’re getting to get it all right,” said Robert Nicholas, the building’s owner.

Despite the devastation it caused, the storm reinforced what had drawn many to the district in the first place, heightening their sense of community.

“We’re an arts community,” Burroughs said. “We’re visionaries and we’re people who do and make. So, of course, we didn’t wait for anybody. Of course, we didn’t wait for permits or this or that. We just started showing up and doing things that needed to be done, because that’s what we do.”

That doesn’t mean things are back to normal, or even close. “This would have been a busy day” before the storm, Burroughs said one Thursday afternoon last month. “It’s so strange that there’s nobody out and about.” A couple of pedestrians peeked inside the shop to say hello, but otherwise there were few visitors. Burroughs is hoping that changes soon as more people realize the area is open again and that there is much more on the horizon.

“The River Arts District is more than a place,” Burroughs said. “It is a living, breathing testament to the power of creativity and community. In the face of disaster, our artists didn’t just rebuild. They reimagined what’s possible.”