Mitchell County Courthouse in Bakersville, North Carolina

Courthouse Information

Mitchell County Courthouse is a historic courthouse located at Bakersville, Mitchell County, North Carolina. It was built in 1907-1908, and is a two-story cast stone building in a vernacular Classical Revival style. It has a hipped roof with a two-stage square cupola crowned by a domical roof. It has four-sided turret-like corner bays.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

County Information

Annexed from the counties of Burke, Caldwell, McDowell, Yancey and Watauga, Mitchell County received its name in honor of Elisha Mitchell (1818-1857). Mitchell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, passed away during his climb of North Carolina's highest mountain, Black Dome. After the professor's death, Black Dome was renamed Mount Mitchell in honor of Elisha Mitchell. Bakersville, formerly established in 1868, is the county seat of government; it was named for David Baker, a founder of the county who settled in the region in 1797. Bandana, Poplar, and Spruce Pine are other townships in Mitchell, and the county borders Tennessee state. The formation of Mitchell County occurred during the Civil War. Union supporters resided in the top half of the present county while Southern sympathizers had settled the bottom section of the region. The two groups wanted to separate ties, and Jacob W. Bowman developed a solution to the problem. A young representative from present-day Bakersville proposed a bill to the General Assembly in the early 1860s, and the N.C. legislature soon passed the proposal for Mitchell County.

As with most mountain counties in North Carolina, Mitchell's original residents were Cherokee. However, by the time European settlers from Germany, Scotland, and Ireland had established their communities in the sixteenth century, the Cherokee had either moved away or been killed by North Carolina militia or diseases brought by the white man.

The Pisgah National Forest includes hundreds of acres within Mitchell County, and it has been a long time travel destination for hikers, campers, and other outdoorsmen and women. Other natural traits in Mitchell County include rivers and other mountaintops. Some of these include the Big Yellow Mountain, Chalk Mountain, Roan Mountain, and the tributary North Toe River.

Our Experience

Across from the courthouse was the Green Building containing artwork from local artists as well as antiques. Of course Laurie had to check it out. The Green Building was built around 1923 as a drug store. It still has the original tin ceiling and lights.

Laurie started talking with the husband of the couple that owned the building and he was an ex RVer and also currently has a Harley Davidson motorcycle. We talked about our travels across the country. He had worked for a time in Alaska and met his wife who is a native Alaskan in Fairbanks. He supervised a paving crew working on a runway and worked crazy hours during the summer because the long periods of sunlight.

I'm not sure I remember the exact details but I think he said he worked at Barrow and he paved the runway where the first jet landed north of the Arctic Circle.

There is a nice paved trail along the river with street lights that would look nice at night. Some kind of local festival was going on in a park across the river from the courthouse. There were the typical food and craft vendors as well as a few Civil War buffs. Laurie picked up some apple butter for her mom and a book about the history of Mitchell County. Her mother's maiden name is Mitchell.

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