This well-known history of Watauga County, North Carolina, is considered one of the best ever written. From Watauga County's 'Yankee Ancestry' to its role in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, nothing is overlooked.

The genealogy of Leon R. Hunt and Beth Carroll including the surnames of Hunt, Miller, Carroll and Chamberlain with an historical summary of these families.

Junaluska is one of the oldest African American communities in western North Carolina and one of the few surviving today. After Emancipation, many former slaves in Watauga County became sharecroppers, were allowed to clear land and to keep a portion, or bought property outright, all in the segregated neighborhood on the hill overlooking the town of Boone, North Carolina. Land and home ownership have been crucial to the survival of this community, whose residents are closely interconnected as extended families and neighbors. Missionized by white Krimmer Mennonites in the early twentieth century, their church is one of a handful of African American Mennonite Brethren churches in the United States, and it provides one of the few avenues for leadership in the local black community. Susan Keefe has worked closely with members of the community in editing this book, which is based on three decades of participatory research. These life history narratives adapted from interviews with residents (born between 1885 and 1993) offer a people's history of the black experience in the southern mountains. Their stories provide a unique glimpse into the lives of African Americans in Appalachia during the 20th century--and a community determined to survive through the next.

It was the Old Buffalo Trail that led both Native Americans and Daniel Boone to the site of present-day Boone, North Carolina, at an elevation of 3,333 feet. Located among the scenic and cool mountains of the High Country, Boone was for a long time a seasonal hunting spot with only a few settled families. After the Civil War the community's population began growing, and in 1899, the tiny town of Boone included 150 residents. In the 1880s, the treacherous and steep Boone and Blowing Rock Turnpike began to bring commerce and visitors to the mountains. Although this remote town was an unlikely location for a school, Watauga Academy was established in 1899, and it would later become Appalachian State University, one of the top-ranked Southern public colleges.