The park is located in the Western Piedmont of North Carolina between the cities of Kings Mountain and Gastonia or about 25 miles (40 km) west of Charlotte.

Crowders Mountain and The Pinnacle, located to the southwest, once served as markers to separate the hunting grounds of the Catawba and Cherokee peoples.

In the early 1970s, a mining company began doing exploratory sampling of areas along what is now the Backside Trail with the intent of purchasing the minerals rights to excavate the mountain for kyanite, barite, and iron.

One of the first FM radio stations in North Carolina, Gastonia's WGNC-FM, erected a transmission tower on Crowders Mountain in the late 1940s.

Crown Castle International had requested the change to allow the signal of a Spanish-language radio station in Gaffney, South Carolina, to reach Charlotte.