At West River Provisions, near a state campground in Jamaica, activity peaks in the summer months of July and August. But the store’s busy season was interrupted this month when historic flooding across the state led to the closure of Jamaica State Park.
The general store, which offers groceries and hot meals, was spared from the July 11 flooding that devastated properties in the neighboring southern Vermont towns of Londonderry, Ludlow and Weston. But now, the closure of the state park in town is hurting the family business.
Forrest Riley, who co-owns the store with his wife, said they’re losing $15,000 a week in sales because of the lack of customers and have had to send staff home.
“It feels like there’s nobody around right now,” Riley said. “It feels like mud season over here when it should be our busiest time of the year.”
Jamaica State Park is among at least seven Vermont state parks that were temporarily closed following the storm flooding, according to a status update on the website of the state Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
Nine miles north is Winhall Brook Camping Area, a federally owned campground in Londonderry, whose visitors also find their way to the stores in Jamaica.
The camping area has been shut down for the rest of the 2023 season after floodwater covered all of the grounds, said campground host Carol Putnam.
In addition, she said, a hazardous-material handler will need to clean up an area where a transformer burned out and began draining fluid. Winhall Brook’s next season doesn’t begin until May 2024.
Jamaica State Park is slated to reopen Tuesday, once damaged local roads leading into the park are repaired, said Vermont State Parks Director Nate McKeen. He said the campground itself wasn’t damaged, but the adjacent West River Trail will be unusable until further notice because parts of the hiking trail sloughed off in the flash floods.
McKeen said that, when the park reopens, only tents and small campers will be allowed because a local access road can’t handle recreational vehicles, or RVs, and large trailers right now.
The 700-acre Jamaica State Park is one of the state’s most popular, he said, because of the variety of activities it offers, as well as its setting: having forests on one side and a town with restaurants and shops on the other side.
The closure of the Jamaica park and others in the state would definitely have an impact on the local economy, McKeen said. “Half of our campers come from out of state,” he said, “and they do spend a lot of money.”
The business at Honeypie, a restaurant in Jamaica’s village of Rawsonville that’s open Friday to Monday, has also plunged in the days since the flooding.
Honeypie saw a 50% drop in sales last Saturday and Sunday compared with the same period last year, said Chloe Genovart, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband. She said that loss translates into thousands of dollars.
Besides the closure of Jamaica State Park and Winhall Brook Camping Area, Genovart said, a damaged portion of Route 30 in town has also limited the flow of people who patronize local businesses. The unusable mile-and-a-half-long roadway includes a damaged bridge over the Winhall River.
Travelers from out of town aren’t likely to be familiar with alternate routes into Rawsonville and might not want to deal with the inconvenience of a detour, Genovart said. “You’re really gonna have to want to come to us because it’s not necessarily quick or easy,” she said.
In response to an inquiry, state Agency of Transportation spokesperson Rachel Noyes said a temporary bridge is being constructed at a different Winhall River crossing, which is estimated to be completed on Aug. 21. The date is subject to change, she said.
As of Friday, Noyes said, VTrans didn’t have any information yet on when the original Route 30 bridge would be rebuilt.
Meanwhile, Camp Plymouth, a state park in Plymouth, won’t be reopening in mid-August as the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation initially advised. McKeen said it’s still unclear when the park can reopen because of the extent of the damage it suffered in the floods — the worst of all state parks.
“That park, the devastation is quite similar to Irene,” he said, referring to the tropical storm that ravaged many parts of Vermont in 2011.
An advisory on Camp Plymouth’s webpage says the park is currently covered in sediment, and all access roads to the park have been damaged.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the opening date of Winhall Brook’s next season.
