Watauga County Courthouse in Boone, North Carolina

Oct 11, 2015 Sun0

Laurie and I like riding our Gold Wing motorcycle. But it is easy to get into a rut and just ride the same roads. So to force ourselves to ride to places we would not normally visit we made a goal to visit and photograph all 100 North Carolina courthouses within 1 year.

As usual, we got a little behind. We started in July 2015 and finished 99 out of 100 by June 2018. The last courthouse was in our home county of Wake and it took us until Feb 2021 to get that final one. But we made it! This blog is about one of those visits.

Many NC courthouses were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The nomination form has some interesting facts about the various courthouse styles over the years.

County Information

The North Carolina History Project lists the following information for this county:

Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Watauga County was established by legislative act in 1849 from parts of Caldwell, Ashe, Wilkes, and Yancey County. The county was named after the Indian tribe and river of the same name, and Watauga is a tribal word that means "beautiful river." The original act commissioned George Council's home as the first court in the region, and the justices of the peace were ordered to find future places to hold court until a courthouse was constructed. By 1851 a superior court had been established, and twenty years later Boone was made the county seat. The celebrated frontiersman of early America and town's namesake, Daniel Boone (1734-1820), camped in Watauga annually for the hunting season. The outdoor play, Horn in the West, also pays homage to Boone and his exploits, and it is shown annually during the summer months in Watauga.
Watauga County was the original homestead of the Cherokee and Watauga. The tribes originally encountered Hernando de Soto (c.1500-1542) in his search for gold. The first Europeans in the region skirmished and transferred disease among the natives. Despite the Spanish's detriment to the tribes, the Cherokee and Watauga maintained their foothold of the region as English and French fur traders began to populate the area in the early to mid-eighteenth century. Dutch, German, Scotch-Irish, and Swedish settlers also settled the area as European immigration flourished prior to the American Revolution.
During the Civil War, Major General George Stoneman (1822-1894) and nearly 5,000 troops advanced "Stoneman's Raid" in the western part of North Carolina, corresponding Sherman's destructive march to the east. Major Stoneman had the original mission "to destroy and not to fight battles" and from March to May of 1865 he destroyed Confederate property, livestock, and morale. After his troops succeeded in a skirmish at Boone, Stoneman split his army in two with one installment that built a makeshift rampart near Deep Gap to hold Confederate prisoners. Stoneman and his troops eventually covered over1,000 miles in their destructive trek across western North Carolina, and many historians credit him for separating the Confederate army from much needed supplies, and for preventing Lee and Johnston from escaping to the north.

Our Experience

Not much to say about this courthouse. This was in Boone. So the traffic was terrible, there were few places to park and getting around was just hard. The current courthouse is a modern structure and we could not find any of the traditional history. No monuments to local people lost in wars and no statues. Pretty boring.

Wikipedia has an article on Wheeler & Runge which was an architectural partnership based in Charlotte, NC. They designed several courthouses in NC. The article says this:

Watauga County Court House, West King Street, Boone, NC. Built in 1904 using the same basic plan and design as Avery, Ashe, and Wilkes. Building was demolished in 1967.