The High Country
Boone and Watauga County
Boone is named for a man who almost certainly hunted here and may well have camped within the town limits, though no document proves the spot. What is documented is everything that came after.
Watauga County
Watauga County was formed in 1849 from parts of Ashe, Caldwell, Wilkes and Yancey counties. It is named for the Watauga River; NCpedia gives the name as an Indian word meaning beautiful river. The county covers about 313 square miles on the Tennessee line and counted 54,086 people in 2020.
Valle Crucis was the first rural historic district designated in North Carolina. The Mast General Store there dates to about 1882 and the Mast Farm Inn to about 1885. Blowing Rock incorporated as a village in 1889 with two hundred permanent residents.
What is known about Daniel Boone
This deserves care, because the town’s name invites more certainty than the record supports. NCpedia says only that Boone was named after Daniel Boone, who camped in the area during hunting season. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation says he visited the region on hunting expeditions, first passing through in 1760. Wikipedia’s formulation is deliberately hedged: he camped on several occasions at a site generally agreed to be within the present city limits.
The firmest link is genealogical rather than geographical. Daniel Boone’s nephews Jesse and Jonathan, sons of his brother Israel, were members of the town’s first church, Three Forks Baptist. His father Squire sat on the first Rowan County court, as described in Salisbury and Rowan County. The downtown post office, built of native stone in 1938, holds a 1940 mural of Daniel Boone by Alan Tompkins; the Postal Service moved to sell the building in 2008 and the town bought it.
A distinction worth making
The historic Watauga Settlement and the Watauga Association were not in present-day Watauga County. They formed in the Watauga River valley in what is now northeastern Tennessee, around Elizabethton and Sycamore Shoals. William Bean was the first recorded traveler there and James Robertson arrived from Orange County in 1770. The Watauga Association formed in 1772 as an independent political body with its own laws and courts after settlers leased land from the Cherokee. In 1775 the Wataugans bought their area outright for £2,000, the same year Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone negotiated a separate Cherokee purchase. The settlers created the Washington District, sought annexation by North Carolina, and a later faction attempted the State of Franklin between 1784 and 1788.
The town
Boone is the county seat. It received its charter during the 1871 to 1872 session of the legislature and is generally dated to 1872, which is why you will sometimes see 1871. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation records that the settlement began as a single row of houses in 1850 and was incorporated in 1872 with about 850 people. It sits at 3,232 feet. The 2020 census counted 19,092.
Appalachian State
Watauga Academy was founded on September 5, 1899 by B. B. Dougherty, D. D. Dougherty and Lillie Shull Dougherty as a teacher-training school. The first fifty-three students met in the old Boone Academy building. It was chartered on March 9, 1903 as the Appalachian Training School for Teachers with 325 students and six faculty, became Appalachian State Normal School in 1925, Appalachian State Teachers College in 1929 with the addition of a four-year degree, and Appalachian State University on July 1, 1967. It joined the University of North Carolina system in 1972.
B. B. Dougherty served as president for fifty-six years, retiring in 1955. Enrollment ran 53 in 1899, 325 in 1903, 1,097 in 1924, 2,000 in 1955 and 4,939 in 1967. In autumn 2025 the university enrolled 21,798 students across its Boone, online and Hickory operations.
The High Country today
Boone is a university town at altitude with a tourism economy layered on top, roughly two hours from Charlotte. For families that combination produces a particular set of legal problems: students and staff who moved here from elsewhere, second homes, and custody arrangements that have to work across a long mountain drive. Those distance questions are covered in parenting plans in North Carolina.
North of here, Ashe County has its own version of the same story, built around a railway, a cheese plant and the New River.
Daniel Boone, Boone, and what is documented
A town named for a frontiersman invites a certain amount of invention. The documented record is thinner than the tourist literature and more interesting for it.
| The claim | What the record supports |
|---|---|
| The name | The town is named for Daniel Boone. That much is uncontested. |
| His presence here | NCpedia says only that he “camped in the area during hunting season”. The federal preservation council says he first passed through in 1760. No surviving contemporary record — no survey, deed or journal — fixes a camp at a particular spot inside the present town, and this article does not name one. |
| The family link | Firmer, and less often told: Boone’s nephews Jesse and Jonathan, sons of his brother Israel, were members of Three Forks Baptist, the town’s first church. |
| The Watauga Association | A different place entirely. The Watauga settlement and its 1772 association formed in the Watauga valley of what is now northeastern Tennessee, not in Watauga County, North Carolina. |
| Incorporation | Chartered in the General Assembly’s 1871–72 session, and usually dated 1872; one state source says 1871, which the session-spanning charter explains. |
| “Tweetsie” | The narrow-gauge East Tennessee and Western North Carolina ran between Johnson City and Boone from 1919 to 1940. The flood of 1940 washed out much of the track and abandonment was approved on March 22, 1941. Engine No. 12, built in 1917, survives and hauls tourists near Blowing Rock. |
Frequently asked questions
Did Daniel Boone live in Boone, North Carolina?
No source places him at a fixed site in the town. The documented position is that he hunted in and passed through the region from about 1760 and is traditionally held to have camped within what are now the town limits.
When was Boone incorporated?
It was chartered during the 1871 to 1872 legislative session and is generally dated to 1872.
When was Watauga County formed?
1849, from parts of Ashe, Caldwell, Wilkes and Yancey counties. It is named for the Watauga River.
Was the Watauga Settlement in Watauga County?
No. The Watauga Settlement and the Watauga Association were in what is now northeastern Tennessee, around Elizabethton and Sycamore Shoals.
How old is Appalachian State University?
It began as Watauga Academy on September 5, 1899 with fifty-three students and became Appalachian State University on July 1, 1967.
Sources for this article
Custody across a mountain drive
Parents split between the High Country and the Charlotte region need a schedule that survives a two-hour drive in winter. Adkins Law drafts parenting plans that account for the distance.
Adkins Law, PLLC · 9620 Sherrill Estates Road, Huntersville, NC 28078
Keep reading
This article is local history, offered for general interest. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Historical accounts are drawn from the sources listed above; where sources disagree, that is noted in the text. For advice about your own situation, speak with a licensed North Carolina attorney.