The charming hamlet of Boone, set at some 3,266 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is the “Heart of the North Carolina High Country.” Along with serving as the county seat of Watauga County and the home of Appalachian State University, the town has long been a beloved vacation getaway.
Among its many attractions—not least all of the outdoor recreation and Blue Ridge Parkway sightseeing at its doorstep—are its historical dimensions, including its very name, which honors one of the most famous frontiersmen in American history.
Boone’s Name
That frontiersman, of course, is Daniel Boone (1734 – 1820), who had numerous associations with this rugged corner of the Southern Appalachians (more on that shortly). The town, chartered during the 1871-1872 session of the North Carolina state legislature but settled several decades earlier, was formally named in honor of the Pennsylvania-born “longhunter” and (literal) trailblazer.
Among its previous names were Councill’s Store, in use by the early 1820s, and Howard, likely a reference to Benjamin Howard, whose hunting cabin stood close to the future townsite. (It is Howard for whom 4,396-foot Howard Knob, a prominent Blue Ridge peak overlooking town, is named.)
Indigenous History
At the time of Euro-American settlement, the Cherokee were among the prominent Native cultures in the region, which is part of their extensive historical homeland and still important to the tribe today.
Daniel Boone
In the early 1750s, when Daniel Boone was a teenager, his father, Squire Boone, moved his family to the banks of the Yadkin River, which rises in the North Carolina High Country. A few years later, Daniel married Rebecca Bryan, and they continued living along the Yadkin.
As a so-called longhunter—18th-century frontiersmen who would spend months at a time in the backcountry in pursuit of game—Boone made frequent excursions into the Blue Ridge Mountains in the late 1760s and early 1770s. Some of these brought him into the vicinity of what became Boone, near which it’s thought he maintained hunting camps. (Such a longhunter outpost a few miles away from Boone became the unincorporated community of Meat Camp, North Carolina.)
Boone also increasingly forayed into Kentucky, host to a rich array of Native cultures but then considered a wilderness by white people. Boone’s knowledge of that frontier and his celebrated skills as a woodsman led North Carolina judge Colonel Richard Henderson and his Transylvania Company, interested in colonizing the Kentucky River country, to enlist him to negotiate with the Cherokee who controlled those lands—and to blaze a trail across the Southern Appalachians to reach them.
Boone embarked with more than two dozen axmen in March 1775 to scout what became called Boone’s Trace or the Wilderness Road between the Holston Valley to the Kentucky River: a route that incorporated ancient game trails and Native pathways and which led through the Cumberland Gap. By the fall of 1775, Boone had himself settled in Kentucky.
Exploring Daniel Boone’s Legacy in Boone
You’ll find numerous references to Daniel Boone in town. On the Appalachian State University campus, for example, you’ll find a statue of Boone and his trusty hunting dogs situated beside the Duck Pond as well as a monument to the frontiersman alleged to include a stone from Boone’s hunting cabin’s chimney. The Watauga County Courthouse includes a marker for the North Carolina Daniel Boone Heritage Trail. And inside the town post office, you can admire a mural, Daniel Boone on a Hunting Trip in Watauga County, painted by Alan Tompkins in 1940.
Boone is also a central part of the well-known and long-running outdoor history play Horn in the West, which evokes Blue Ridge life in the colonial and Revolutionary War days. The drama, written by Kermit Hunter and performed since 1952, is shown each summer in Boone on grounds that also include the Hickory Ridge History Museum, where a Daniel Boone Day comes celebrated each year.
Stoneman’s Raid
Another well-known part of Boone’s history concerns the American Civil War. In the spring of 1865, Major General George Stoneman led some 6,000 Union forces on one of the longest cavalry raids on record through the highlands of Virginia and North Carolina. This last of the three “Stoneman’s Raids,” which overlapped with Major General William Tecumseh Sherman’s operations in eastern North Carolina and was intended to demolish Confederate infrastructure and supplies to the greatest extent possible, included a skirmish in Boone on March 28. On that day, Stoneman’s cavalry defeated the local Confederate home guard and 1st North Carolina Cavalry Regiment soldiers and took many prisoners before pillaging Boone and moving onward to Wilkesboro.
A historical marker in front of the Watauga County Courthouse commemorates the fight.
The Junaluska Community
Another remarkable part of Boone’s history is the Junaluska Community, among the oldest Black communities in western North Carolina, which was established by free and enslaved African-Americans in the 1840s. A shining example of “Affrilachian” culture and heritage, this sloping neighborhood is still home to many descendants of the original settlement.
A mural at the Watauga County Library celebrates one of the historical hubs of Junaluska life: the Chocolate Bar, which in the 1940s and 1950s served as a bustling social club for the community. A marker in the Boone Cemetery, which was historically segregated, lists the names of some of the Black people buried there; the Clarissa Hill Cemetery has served the Junaluska Community since the 1950s.
Other Historical Attractions In and & Around Boone
The aforementioned Hickory Ridge History Museum offers exhibits and living-history demonstrations focused on Boone-area life in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Numerous historical buildings and structures in Boone and its surrounds are of interest, from the former county jailhouse (built in 1889 and now hosting a restaurant, Proper), and 1908-built Jones House downtown to the 19th-century Brinegar and Caudill cabins along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Any trip to Boone will be enriched by pondering this lively mountain town’s history—and its indigenous heritage!
