Yellow Mountain Gap and the March of the Overmountain Men
Near Banner Elk, North Carolina
High on the ridgeline west of Banner Elk lies Yellow Mountain Gap, a notch in the Roan highlands that once echoed with the footsteps of an army of frontier riflemen. In the autumn of seventeen eighty, during the American Revolution, a British officer threatened to march over the mountains and lay waste to the backcountry settlements. The settlers answered him.
About one thousand volunteers, remembered as the Overmountain Men because they lived west of the Appalachian ridge, mustered at Sycamore Shoals on September twenty-fifth, seventeen eighty. John Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought two hundred forty men each, joined by North Carolina and Virginia militias. After a fiery farewell sermon by the Reverend Samuel Doak, they began their long climb over the Blue Ridge, crossing the mountains near Yellow Mountain Gap at the base of Roan Mountain, some of it through early snow.
From here they pressed on toward South Carolina. On October seventh, seventeen eighty, they cornered the Loyalist force at Kings Mountain and won a swift, decisive victory that turned the tide of the war in the South. Their route is now preserved as the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, and this quiet gap remains one of its most dramatic passages.
