Spruce Pine is the largest town in Mitchell County, North Carolina, United States.

Spruce Pine was founded in 1907, when the Clinchfield Railroad made its way up the North Toe River from Erwin, Tennessee.

The town was originally centered around a tavern operated by Isaac English, which was located on an old roadway that ran from Cranberry, North Carolina, down to Marion, NC.

North Carolina Governor Cameron Morrison deployed National Guard troops to Spruce Pine so that the workers could return and complete the road.

[5] The railroad, combined with a rapidly expanding mining industry (the town is the namesake of the famous Spruce Pine Mining District) made Spruce Pine the largest town in the Toe River Valley, as it became the hub of commerce and culture for the area.

With the decline in use of railroads to ship goods, along with increasing automation in the mining industry, the town recently has seen its fortunes dwindle and has undertaken a major effort to reinvent itself.

Spruce Pine has high-purity quartz, a mineral required in a variety of important products, such as semiconductors.

Mayland Community College also calls Spruce Pine home, just outside the city limits to the east on the Avery County line.

Founded by an act of the North Carolina General Assembly in 1971, Mayland hosts some 35 curriculum programs and provides vocational and technical training, along with college transfer opportunities to residents of the region.

Beginning in 2014, The North Carolina Department of Transportation began widening U.S. Route 19E, which is the major corridor linking the towns of Spruce Pine and Burnsville to Interstate 26.

It eventually was renamed Blue Ridge Regional Hospital, and was absorbed by Mission Health System.