Catawba Falls
This two-tiered waterfall cascades below the Catawba River’s headwaters southwest of Old Fort. Both the falls and the river are named for the indigenous people that first lived here. In their language, “Catawba” means “people of the river.”
Interview by Anne Swann
This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
There were three major Indian trails that converged right here near Old Fort, very close to where Mill Creek flows into the Catawba River. One of these was the Occoneechee path that came up from South Carolina and turned back west and followed basically the route of today’s highway 70. It crossed the mountain through the Old Swannanoa Gap, which was by way of Catawba Falls and around that way. That portion of course was later followed by Griffith Rutherford on his infamous Cherokee expedition. Another trail went up through what’s now Woodlawn, up through Turkey Cove, on up to Mitchell and Avery county, and that was the old Cherokee trading path to Virginia. Then there was a loop of the Boone Trail that came off the Virginia Path and joined the Occoneechee Path over where Old Fort Elementary School is. So those three trails all came together here. Old Fort was, besides being the westernmost point of civilization prior to the Revolution, it had been, in my estimation, a very important Cherokee area. In 1763, the boundary was redesignated that gave the settlers a certain area that was okay to settle and they said “nobody pass this point because everything on the other side is going to remain Cherokee territory.” Of course it was never enough and the settlers started to move beyond it which did not make the Cherokee, as you might imagine, very happy. So there was some conflict. This was a good place to lose your scalp if you didn’t maintain a good relationship.