Newland: Highest County Seat in the Eastern United States

Newland sits at roughly thirty-six hundred feet above sea level, making it the highest county seat in the eastern United States. That distinction is almost the whole story of why the town exists at all.

Avery County was formed in nineteen eleven from pieces of Mitchell, Caldwell, and Watauga counties, becoming the one hundredth and final county in North Carolina. The land where Newland now stands had been known as Old Fields of Toe, a farming hollow near the Toe River. When legislators debated where to put the county seat, Lieutenant Governor William Calhoun Newland supported the effort, and the new town was named in his honor. It was incorporated in nineteen thirteen, the year the courthouse and jail both opened, both of which still stand. Before it was Newland, Old Fields of Toe was an early muster ground, a place where militia gathered in the years around the Battle of Kings Mountain. The land was granted to Colonel Waightstill Avery in seventeen eighty-three. A railroad flag stop called Old Fields appeared in eighteen ninety-nine, and the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad opened a depot in nineteen fourteen. It burned in nineteen twenty-one, was rebuilt, and kept running until nineteen forty. The post office opened in nineteen twelve. Even now, only about seven hundred fifteen people live here, according to the twenty twenty census. Newland remains small, but its elevation alone sets it apart: a county seat sitting higher than almost anything else east of the Mississippi.