[9] In the early 1770s, several families settled west of that line in what is now McDowell County, including the twins Samuel and William Davidson, and their brothers George and John.

[9][10][a] Samuel purchased 644 acres (261 ha; 1.006 sq mi) of land at the headwaters of the Catawba River, now in the present-day town of Old Fort.

[10] Because McDowell County was west of the treaty line, the Davidson family and other settlers were at "the westernmost outpost of Colonial civilization".

[9][12][1][b] This militia company would have consisted of around twenty men between the ages of sixteen and sixty from Burke, McDowell, and Rowan Counties, serving a three-month tour of duty without uniforms.

[13] In June 1776, Davidson's Fort was garrisoned by 82 militia troops under the leadership of Captain Reuben White and Lieutenant Samuel Simpson.

[10] The surviving militia retreated east to the Quakers Meadows Fort until they were reinforced by General Griffith Rutherford and his brigade.

"[1][17] In 1784, Samuel Davidson and his family were the first known white settlers west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, settling on Christians Creek in what is now Azalea in Buncombe County.

[1] Samuel's wife, Rebecca, escaped with their infant daughter Ruth and an enslaved woman, traveling by foot to Davidson's Fort.

[14] They killed the Cherokee at a camp when the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers join (now along the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina).

[5] Local tradition says that the fort site is now the Mountain Gateway Museum and Heritage Center, operated by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

[5][22] In 2007, Senator Joe Sam Queen proposed legislation to award the nonprofit $250,000 to purchase a site and reconstruct Davidson's Fort.

[1] The historic park hosts militia muster re-enactments, annual Civil War Days, and recreations of the daily lives of the early European settlers in McDowell County and western North Carolina.