SAN JOSE, Calif. — Emergency officials reopened Highway 1 in Big Sur on Thursday, providing a lifeline to restaurants, hotels and other businesses that have been largely shut down for nearly a month during the height of tourist season as the Timber fire has burned across thousands of acres.

The move, just in time for the Labor Day holiday weekend, comes after firefighters continued to make progress on the blaze while cooler temperatures and higher humidity have largely stopped its growth everywhere but in remote parts of the Los Padres National Forest miles east of the famed oceanfront highway.

Hotels, restaurants and other businesses began to reopen Thursday. Evacuation orders were lifted along Highway 1.

“People are positive now and optimistic,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the Nepenthe restaurant, a cliff-top landmark. “We feel like the worst of it is behind us. Right now the weather is fantastic. There is no smoke. For most guests, they won’t even know there is a fire.”

The area’s state parks, including Andrew Molera, Pfeiffer Big Sur, Julia Pfeiffer Burns and Limekiln, remained closed.

On Thursday, CHP officers reopened about 40 miles of Highway 1 in coastal Monterey County to the public. It had been closed since last Thursday from mile marker 56 near the Little Sur River to mile marker 45 near the Big Sur Post Office. During that time, crews parked engines and other equipment on the roadway in what proved to be a successful effort to set back burns to remove vegetation and protect homes and businesses.

A second section of Highway 1 in southern Monterey County, from mile marker 19 near Kirk Creek Campground to the Monterey-San Luis Obispo County line at mile marker 0, remained closed Thursday as crews battled a different and larger wildfire, the Plaskett fire.

The road closures mean people from the Bay Area can drive south into Big Sur, but people from Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California can’t drive north to it.

“It’s been very difficult financially, particularly for our employees,” Gafill said. “Unemployment is a reduced benefit from what they would have made if they had been working. And it is emotionally strenuous. Fire is a high-anxiety event. It creates a lot of stress. This fire felt like a gut punch. But it is part of the drama and the dynamic nature of living on the edge of the continent.”

Because of improving weather conditions, where temperatures fell from the 90s to the 70s in recent days and humidity rose significantly as winds from the ocean brought in moist air, the Timber fire has stalled. That has given firefighters a major boost and allowed them to make significant progress with helicopters, engines and hand crews, officials said.

“The fire was burning about a mile a day around the edge,” said Nathan Lancaster, a fire behavior specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, during a community meeting in Carmel on Wednesday night. “Now it’s inches or feet a day. It’s just smoldering.”

On Thursday afternoon, the Timber fire was 25,121 acres and 23% contained. Nearly all of the containment line is east of Highway 1, protecting hundreds of homes and businesses, which are no longer considered to be in danger.

“Highway 1 is looking very good right now,” said Joe Zwierzchowski, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

The fire began Aug. 8. So far, no structures have been destroyed, and there have been no injuries or deaths. Its cause remains under investigation.

This week, crews have nearly finished reopening old containment lines in a broad region around Big Sur that extends as far as Los Padres Dam and the Tassajara area. The goal is to provide a boundary in case the fire keeps moving and weather conditions worsen. They have used bulldozers to clear brush from the old containment lines, many of which date back to prior large fires, such as the Soberanes fire, which burned in 2016, charring 132,127 acres and destroying 57 buildings. That fire, caused by an unattended campfire, burned for nearly three months in Big Sur’s steep, remote wilderness, most of which has no road access.

Although conditions have improved dramatically on the Timber fire, it is not out, Zwierzchowski said. He noted that on Thursday a helicopter brought 8 firefighters with rappelling gear in to cut hand lines in a steep section near Mount Manuel. In other areas, such as on the southern and eastern flanks near Arroyo Seco, firefighters were still working to improve containment lines with masticators and other equipment.

“This is going to go on for weeks,” he said. “It’s not something that is going to wrap up in the next few days.”

A similar story was unfolding about 20 miles south, at the Plaskett fire. That blaze, which began Aug. 26, was 29,123 acres — roughly the size of the city of San Francisco — on Thursday and just 1% contained. It was burning in a more remote area of Monterey County, including in the Silver Peak Wilderness east of Lucia and Gorda. Unlike with the Timber Fire, some of the landscape burning at the Plaskett Fire has not experienced a wildfire in 50 years or more, leading to more dense brush and vegetation.

Because of the favorable weather, however, crews were making good progress there also, fire officials said, stopping its northern spread near Nacimiento-Ferguson Road and protecting homes and businesses in Lucia, Gorda, and Pacific Valley.

Weather experts say although slightly warmer weather is expected this weekend, the favorable conditions are forecast to continue.

With strong El Niño conditions potentially bringing big storms this winter, Big Sur will have challenges after the fires are out, said Ryan Walbrun, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“Even after this is all said and done, we’ll have to deal with the debris flows and mudslides this winter,” he said.

But overall, trends are moving in the right direction now, he said.

“We’ve really moistened things up. It has helped the fuels immensely,” Walbrun said. “We’ve had a change in the weather. I think it lasts for a while. We’ve kind of turned the corner. Things are starting to look better.”

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