Old Fort

… town in W McDowell County on Catawba River. Alt. 1,438. Inc. 1872 as Catawba Vale by a northern land company that expected to develop a city on the Davidson plantation, which it had purchased the previous year. Name changed in 1873 to Old Fort, the name by which the community had been known since 1828 or earlier, when a post office existed there. Named for Davidson's Fort, erected in 1776 by troops under the command of Gen. Griffith Rutherford, who led expedition against the Cherokee Indians.