Avery County North Carolina

Avery County was the 100th and final county established in North Carolina. The formation of the county was completed on February 23, 1911, and was created from parts of Caldwell County, Mitchell County, and Watauga County. It was named for Waightstill Avery, a colonel in the American Revolutionary War and the first Attorney General of North Carolina (1777-1779).

Avery County is often noted for the large amount of Christmas Trees that the county produces.

The county seat was originally in the Town of Elk Park, which was then the largest town in the county, located on the county’s north end, on the Tennessee and North Carolina border. Upon completion of the county’s courthouse in 1912, the seat was moved to the central location of what was then an unincorporated area known as Fields of Toe, for the meadows along the head of the Toe River, in what is now the incorporated Town of Newland. The town was so named for then Lt. Gov. William Newland, an influential Democrat, who helped garner support in the then heavily Democratic legislature in Raleigh, for Avery County, an overwhelmingly pro-Union Republican area.

According to local legend, Elk Park citizens were so upset at the decision to move of the county seat from their town that they refused to give up the official books. The then sheriff, like all county officials, was a Democrat and an interim appointee of the Democratic governor in Raleigh, who would hold office from July 1, 1911, until the next election cycle in late 1912, when the almost all-Republican electorate would undoubtedly vote in all Republicans as local officials. The sheriff was leery of confronting the irate local Elk Park citizens, so his wife baked cookies and had their pastor deliver them as a peace offering. The citizens then cheerfully handed over the books, which were sent to the new offices at the new courthouse in Newland.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 247 square miles of which 246.9 square miles is land and 0.1 square miles is water.

Avery County is extremely rural and mountainous with all of the county’s terrain located within the Appalachian Mountains range and a mean altitude of 3,510 feet. Interestingly, Avery County is the second-highest county east of the Mississippi River behind nearby Haywood County, North Carolina. The highest point in the county is Grassy Ridge Bald, 6,165 feet above sea level. Most of Grandfather Mountain, whose highest point is 5,946 feet at Calloway Peak on the tri-point bordering Watauga and Caldwell Counties, is within Avery County. At 5,526 feet, Beech Mountain (also shared with Watauga County) is the highest incorporated community east of the Mississippi River, while at 3,606 feet Newland is the highest county seat in the Eastern United States.