History
In anticipation of both the upcoming American Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the 1980 bicentennial of the Battle of King's Mountain, many citizens in the five states along the original routes—which included Georgia --- reenacted and hiked along the segments of the Appalachian mountain trails and highways closely following the path of the actual 1780 march to the battle site located near present day Kings Mountain, North Carolina, on the North Carolina-South Carolina border.
Hikers, military reenactors, and scouts have long followed the segments of the famous overmountain victory trail, and in 1975 three Elizabethton boy scouts were among those who completed the first re-enactment of the overmountain march (approximately 214 miles in one direction) from Elizabethton to King's Mountain and were met at a ceremony by U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller at the Kings Mountain National Military Park located near Blacksburg, South Carolina.
Many of these same OVT hikers, reenactors, and area citizens later sought federal recognition of the overmountain march to the Battle of King's Mountain as being analogous to the spontaneous response of the patriot Minutemen at Lexington and Concord during the American Revolutionary War.
OVT supporters worked with representatives of other American trails to create what became known as the National Trails System and later carried scrolls petitioning Congress for national designation of the OVT route. The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail was officially designated as a national historic trail during September 1980 by federal legislation authorized by the U.S. Congress, and later in 1980, President Jimmy Carter—recognizing the historical significance of the frontier patriots marching over the Appalachian Mountains to defeat the Loyalist army at the Battle of King's Mountain—signed federal law designating the historical overmountain route as the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, the first National Historic Trail established within the eastern United States exactly 200 years after the event it commemorates.
Read more about this topic: Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail
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