Much of Tryon and Polk County’s colonial history is just now beginning to be more widely recognized by local residents.

Recent preservation efforts by area history enthusiasts and generous funding support to implement preservation and educational programs have combined to create opportunities both to understand and to celebrate the contributions and accomplishments of our founding colonial forbears.

Consider the recent designation by the National Park Service of Alexander’s Ford on the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail and you realize the vast importance of local place and local action during the southern campaign of the American Revolution. You might also recognize how vital a role the regional patriot militia played to secure American independence, a role culminating on Oct. 7, 1780 at the Battle of Kings Mountain, noted early on by Thomas Jefferson as the decisive turning point of the American Revolution.

Another even earlier example of our colonial past, now being represented in Tryon’s downtown corridor on McCown Street, is found in the short-lived Cherokee Boundary Treaty of 1767, negotiated by colonial royal governor William Tryon, for whom the Town of Tryon later came to be named.