Some say that Watuaga County's name comes from a word meaning "beautiful waters." Yet during the Civil War, events in this rugged western North Carolina region were anything but beautiful. After hundreds of men marched off to fight in the Confederate army, the area was left open to bands of plundering rogues from east Tennessee. While no large-scale battles took place here, Boone was the scene of the first skirmish of Stoneman's 1865 raid. The infamous Keith and Malinda Blalock called Watauga County home, leading escaped prisoners of war and other dissidents from Blowing Rock to Banner Elk, while George W. Kirk's notorious band robbed the already destitute citizenry during the waning days of the war. The four brutal years of the conflict changed the county forever.

Watauga County, North Carolina, in the Civil War looks at Watauga County during the Civil War years. Additional chapters chronicle the lives of local soldiers who marched away and fought for the gray, along with chapters on the Reconstruction time period and the remembrance process.