[3] Archaeological excavations performed by Dr. David Moore during the early 1980s, revealed artifacts and other evidence that the earliest inhabitants of McDowell County lived there from the Woodland period and Mississippian culture era, from 250 to 1500 AD.

Dr. Moore discovered this material in an area close to the Catawba River, in and around an unusual topographical site known as Round Hill.

[4] Both the historic Cherokee and Catawba Indians were Native American peoples known to live in what is now McDowell County, and they had been there long before any Europeans.

These Native Americans were living in this section for centuries before the Spanish Juan Pardo's 1566 expedition to the interior region from the Atlantic coast.

His purpose was to acquire territory for Spain and establish forts for an alternative interior route to central Mexico.

[6][7] Pardo also hoped to find precious metals during his expedition, in which he stopped at several Native American villages.

[8] Pardo directed his forces to establish five more forts in the interior, including one at Chiaha, in present-day southeastern Tennessee.

The Native Americans raided the Spanish newcomers and killed all but one of the soldiers in the garrisons, burning all six forts in 1568.

[9][10] In 1748, "Hunting" John McDowell received a land grant from the colony of North Carolina for property known today as Pleasant Gardens, including acreage that originally extended from Swan's Pond (Catawba County) up the Catawba River west to present-day Marion and into the region known as Buck Creek.

McDowell went hunting with his friend Henry Weidner, and the two came upon a lush green valley with thousands of acres of what they thought was virgin forest.

He is noted in Max Dixon's book, The Wataugans, as being instrumental in Jacob Brown's purchase of one of the last remaining pieces of acreage along the Nolichucky River in eastern Tennessee.

In 1793, Colonel John Carson built a plantation house near Buck Creek in the Pleasant Gardens community.

It was named for Joseph McDowell, a Revolutionary War leader and hero of the Battle of King's Mountain.

McDowell County rises rapidly from the Piedmont (United States) in its extreme eastern border where elevations average about 1200 feet above sea level, to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the north and west.

Its lowest point is 969 feet above sea level along Cane Creek in the county's southeastern corner.

McDowell County is a member of the Isothermal Planning and Development Commission regional council of governments.

Since 1956, only two Democratic candidates have won the county's vote in presidential elections: Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1976, both hailing from the southern region of the nation.