Ashe County
West Jefferson, Fleetwood and Ashe County
West Jefferson exists because a railroad company wanted to save money on grading. Everything the town has since become — cheese, murals, tourism — follows from where the surveyors put the depot in 1915.
The Virginia Creeper
The Virginia-Carolina Railroad reached here in 1914 and 1915, and the first train passed through West Jefferson in February 1915. The route was put through this site rather than through the older county seat at Jefferson in order to avoid the cost of additional construction. That decision is the direct reason the town exists.
Local businessmen formed the West Jefferson Land Company and bought the land before the route was publicly announced. They surveyed the new town and fixed its limits as a square half a mile north, south, east and west of the Virginia-Carolina depot — a grid drawn around a railway platform. West Jefferson was chartered in February 1915; the visitor bureau gives the date as February 9. The First National Bank of West Jefferson opened the same year. You will see 1909 given as the incorporation year in some places; the National Register nomination, reviewed by the state preservation office, says 1915, and that is the better source.
The line later ran as the Norfolk and Western’s Virginia-Carolina branch, known as the Virginia Creeper, between Abingdon in Virginia and Todd in North Carolina, through Tuckerdale, Lansing and West Jefferson. There were daily runs from 1915 into the early 1930s, dropping to weekly as the timber ran out. The Norfolk and Western operated it until 1977, about sixty-two years in Ashe County.
Jefferson and West Jefferson
Jefferson is the county seat and much older. Ashe County was incorporated by the General Assembly in 1799 and construction of Jefferson’s public buildings began in 1800, after a commission bought fifty acres for a hundred dollars. It is described as the first town in the nation named for Thomas Jefferson.
The younger town overtook it commercially almost immediately. By 1920 West Jefferson had 462 residents to Jefferson’s 196, and the gap widened. Ashe County’s own site still calls West Jefferson the county’s retail and service hub. The present populations have reversed again: Jefferson counted 1,622 in 2020 and West Jefferson 1,279. Before the railroad, this valley was known for cherry orchards, on land Governor Richard Caswell had granted to Colonel Ben Cleveland — 320 acres in 1779.
Ashe County Cheese
The cheese plant was started in 1930 by the Kraft Corporation, which consolidated local cheese-making and produced cheddar daisy wheels for national distribution. Kraft held it until 1975, after which it passed through a series of owners: a former manager, a pair of Wisconsin cheesemakers in the 1980s, and several investment companies through the 1990s. In 2004 the operation split into separate plant and retail divisions.
It is widely marketed as the South’s oldest cheese factory. The company’s own site makes no such claim, saying only that it has operated for more than seventy-five years, so the superlative is repeated here as marketing rather than fact.
The murals
Industry left through the 1970s and 1980s and the town pivoted deliberately to tourism and arts businesses in the mid to late 1990s. The mural program began in 1996 with a single commissioned work, coordinated largely by the Ashe County Arts Council, often with HandMade in America and the North Carolina Arts Council. The Arts Council documents six murals created between 1996 and 2006, including “History of Ashe Through the Ages” by Jack Young in 1996 and “New River Traditions” by Marianne DiNapoli Mylet in 1998. Other sources count fifteen murals in the district; the two counts are measuring different things.
The West Jefferson Historic District was listed on the National Register on October 5, 2007, with a period of significance from about 1915 to 1957 and fifty contributing buildings. Streetscape improvements ran from 2012 to 2016.
Fleetwood
Fleetwood is an unincorporated community with no municipal government and no separate census count, about eight miles south-southwest of Jefferson along Railroad Grade Road near US 221, at 2,874 feet. Its post office was established on July 27, 1898, part of a wave of community formation across Ashe County between 1870 and 1900 documented by the state preservation office.
Railroad Grade Road, which runs through Fleetwood along the South Fork, takes its name from the old rail grade it follows. The South Fork was a principal settlement corridor: the Moravian bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg followed it as far as Grassy Creek in 1752 while scouting sites, and the early land grants cluster along it.
The New River
The New River is formed where the North Fork, 43 miles long, meets the South Fork, 72 miles long, both rising in the Blue Ridge in Watauga and Ashe counties. It flows north from the Ashe and Alleghany county line into Virginia and West Virginia, joining the Gauley to form the Kanawha — one of the few major rivers in the continental United States to run north. The name is not ancient; it reflects exploration of then-new territory in 1749.
You will be told, often, that it is the second oldest river in the world after the Nile. That claim deserves care. It rests on the observation that the New cuts across the structural grain of the Appalachians rather than around it, which is read as evidence that the river was already there when the mountains rose and cut down as they came up. The problem is that there is no reliable technique for dating a river channel; rivers are created, captured and destroyed by erosion over and over. The defensible statement is about the persistence of the drainage pattern, not a datable age for the water course. It is an old river. How old is not something anyone can currently prove.
Ashe County is also one of the centers of North Carolina’s Christmas tree industry, and the New River’s protection as a National Wild and Scenic River in the 1970s, after a fight over proposed dams, is the reason this valley looks the way it does rather than like the Catawba.
The New River’s age, and why the claim is contested
Ashe County’s best-known fact about itself is one that geologists will not sign off on. It is worth explaining why, because the honest version is more interesting than the slogan.
| The question | What the record supports |
|---|---|
| The popular claim | The New is often called the second-oldest river in the world, after the Nile. |
| Why people say it | The river cuts across the structural grain of the Appalachians rather than around it, which is read as evidence that it was already flowing before the mountains rose and simply cut down as they lifted. |
| The problem | There is no reliable technique for dating a river channel. Published estimates for the New range from about two or three million years to about 320 million, depending entirely on which method is used. |
| What is well supported | That the drainage basin has held roughly its present configuration for a very long time — a U.S. Geological Survey biologist puts it at more than 300 million years — and that the river flows north into Virginia and West Virginia to join the Gauley and form the Kanawha. |
| What this article will not say | That the New is the oldest, or the second-oldest, river in the world. That ranking is a popular claim, not a settled scientific finding. |
| The protected reach | 26.5 miles, all classified Scenic, designated a National Wild and Scenic River on April 13, 1976, after North Carolina declared the stretch a state scenic river on May 26, 1975. |
Two smaller cautions for this county. West Jefferson was chartered in February 1915, the same month the first train came through — not 1909, as one widely copied infobox says; the National Register nomination and the town itself both give 1915. And Ashe County Cheese is marketed as the South’s oldest cheese factory, a claim the company’s own site does not make; what is documented is that Kraft started the plant in 1930 and that it has changed hands six times since.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there a West Jefferson and a Jefferson?
Because the Virginia-Carolina Railroad routed around the older county seat at Jefferson to save on construction, and a new town was laid out around the depot in 1915.
When was West Jefferson incorporated?
February 1915, the same month the first train arrived. Some sources give 1909; the National Register nomination gives 1915 and is the better authority.
What was the Virginia Creeper?
The nickname for the Virginia-Carolina line, later the Norfolk and Western’s Virginia-Carolina branch, running between Abingdon, Virginia and Todd, North Carolina. It ran until 1977.
Is the New River really the oldest river in the world?
Not provable. There is no reliable method for dating river channels. What geologists can defend is that the drainage pattern is very old, because the river cuts across the Appalachian grain rather than around it.
Where is Fleetwood, NC?
An unincorporated community in Ashe County along Railroad Grade Road near US 221, about eight miles south-southwest of Jefferson. Its post office opened in 1898.
Sources for this article
Mountain counties, Piedmont courts
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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.