(banjo playing) A banjo, an acoustic guitar, some good old toe tapping, and a guy in overalls in a cowboy hat blowing on a jug.

It's quintessential Western North Carolina mountains.

- First and foremost, we're a community gathering space.

- [Jason] You won't find a single stoplight in the small town of Lansing, although there is a three-way stop.

Located just by the town's main intersection, sits the Old Orchard Creek General Store, which in many ways, is the heartbeat of this tightly-knit community.

- It's hard to put into words just what it means.

- [Jason] On this mid-December day, what appeared to be the entire town, showed up.

It was a celebration marking the store's grand reopening.

Dogs invited, too.

The store has all sorts of goodies like blankets, flowers, paintings, and books.

- Oh, this is the best.

It's such a good book.

- There's coffee, beer, and wine.

Trail mixes, biscuit mixes, jams, fresh bread, and canned nuts.

And in the fridge, cheesecake and glass coke bottles.

- We just have kind of some specialty goods that you wouldn't really expect to find in a more rural environment.

So that kind of makes us stand out.

- [Jason] Orchard Creek was the first downtown Lansing business to reopen after Hurricane Helene's devastating floods.

- It's just wonderful to see one of our business get open back up, and to see how people have responded to reopening.

- [Jason] The store itself dates back nearly 80 years.

- The building itself is from the 1940s.

- [Jason] And it's always been a general store.

- And I used to come into the store when it was Ms. Hart's general store to buy candy as a kid.

- [Jason] Shelby Trammel bought Orchard Creek a little over a year ago.

Things were going along just fine until that fateful Friday.

- From what I remember from that Friday.

It's kind of a blur.

- [Jason] Big Horse Creek runs right alongside downtown.

So shallow, you can usually walk across it.

A tiny little old field branch with its meandering ducks empties out into it.

- You can look at the creek and you can say, "Wow, that's a nice little trout strain, pretty little creek."

And this little stream right here that goes into it.

Not much to it.

- [Jason] Shelby opened the store that Friday morning as usual.

- I opened up, served regulars, and then the power went out around 10:00 AM.

And then I started to notice the water rising in the surrounding creeks.

They started to kind of breach the road and fill the basement first.

And then next thing I know, there's about two to three feet of water in my store.

- [Jason] She did whatever she could in the precious minutes she had left to try to save as much as possible.

- It was a frantic race against time.

- [Jason] But the water rose so fast, Shelby had to get out.

- It was about when the water was around chest-high that I decided I knew that I needed to get out.

- You could not have imagined that kind of raging water that we saw and the strength of it.

- [Jason] But just as quickly as the water came, it went, all within a few hours.

By six o'clock that Friday night, Shelby went back to assess the damage.

- I was in a state of shock, honestly.

The water lifted up commercial equipment that weighed hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

All my inventory kind of softened mud, and everything was pretty much ruined.

- Most of the downtown businesses had anywhere from four to eight feet of water.

- All down the street.

I mean, from here all the way down it was, you know, the businesses were devastated.

- [Jason] After the initial shock wore off, attention quickly turned to cleanup.

Mud a foot deep everywhere, and everything in the store from plywood, drywall, and insulation had to come out.

- On the one hand, I was grieving that first week, and then also trying to formulate "What do I do?

How do I move forward?"

- [Jason] The total loss at the general store was valued at $300,000.

Shelby's GoFundMe page raised about a third of that, and a community-wide effort was made to help her rebuild.

- I always knew I was gonna rebuild.

I just didn't know that early on how I was gonna do it 'cause I didn't know where the funding was gonna come from.

- [Jason] It took nearly three months to rebuild what Helene destroyed in a day.

- We had people here working nonstop 24 hours a day sometimes.

- It was an incredible example of community.

- [Jason] With every other business in town still boarded up, and remnants of Helene everywhere, the general store once again welcomed guests.

- I didn't know what to expect for today.

So to see the turnout has been nonstop, and it's just...

It's overwhelming.

- We've seen locals, we've seen second homeowners, we've seen tourists and visitors come in, and really just to celebrate the fact that this is back.

- You should be very proud.

You should be probably too tired to be proud.

- I'm too tired to be... Too tired to feel anything right now.

- Yeah.

- [Jason] The store's reopening wasn't just about a business welcoming back customers, it meant so much more.

It represented a beacon of hope, a shining light for a small town that has been through so much.

- I think what it says about Lansing what Lansing has always been about, which is that we are a resilient community.

We're a very tight-knit community.

We are neighbors, we are friends, we are community.

We are people that really do support each other, which is something that you don't find so much in the world anymore.

- I've told people a number of times that I'd become a little bit of a skeptic.

My faith in mankind had kind of dwindled over the last 15 years, 20 years, a little bit at a time.

But when I came out here, and the water's receded, and I saw the volunteers from all over the place, from here in town, from states away from here, it restored a lot of my faith in mankind to see that.