Bakersville is a town in Mitchell County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 450 at the 2020 census.
History
In prehistoric times, local mica deposits were extensively mined by Native Americans. The first Euro-American settlers arrived in the area after the American Revolution, establishing scattered homesteads. The town of Bakersville dates from the 1850s Following the Civil War, the county seat of newly created Mitchell County was relocated to the town that had been renamed Bakersville by the Republican state government, Bakersville is also home to the North Carolina Rhododendron Festival. The pageant attracts visitors from across the state and nation, most notably Richard Nixon in 1958.
Historian and sociologist James W. Loewen has identified Bakersville as one of several possible sundown towns in North Carolina.
The Mitchell County Courthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Geography
Bakersville is in central Mitchell County, in the valley of Cane Creek, sitting at an elevation of above sea level. Pumpkin Patch Mountain () and Meadlock Mountain () rise above the town to the north, and Roan Mountain rises to beyond them, north of the town.
North Carolina Highway 226 runs through the center of Bakersville, leading southeast to Spruce Pine, the largest town in Mitchell County, and west, then north to the Tennessee border at Iron Mountain Gap. North Carolina Highway 261 starts in Bakersville and leads north to the crest of Roan Mountain at Carvers Gap on the Tennessee border.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town of Bakersville has a total area of , all land. Cane Creek, running through the center of town, is a west-flowing tributary of the North Toe River, one of the headwaters of the Nolichucky River which flows west into Tennessee.
Education
Bakersville has one public primary and used to have a middle school, with approximately two hundred students.
Demographics
As of the census
- Ella St. Clair Thompson, suffragist, attorney and business owner
- Red Wilson, bluegrass musician
- Waddell Wilson, former crew chief and engine builder in NASCAR
- Ralph Yelton, served in the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1977 to 1989
See also
- Roan Mountain, Tennessee
- Roan Mountain State Park