Pioneer Day

25 Apr 2015

CIVIL WAR FLAG TO BE EXHIBITED AT MOUNTAIN GATEWAY MUSEUM’S
2015 PIONEER DAY FESTIVAL

Mountain Gateway Museum & Heritage Center will host its 31st Annual Pioneer Day Festival on Saturday, April 25, in Old Fort, NC.
This free family-oriented event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the museum’s grounds at the intersection of Catawba Avenue and Water Street, just a quarter-mile off I-40 at Exit 73 in Old Fort. Parking also is free and will be available in the parking lot at the end of Water Street.
The 2015 festival will feature a variety of traditional Appalachian Mountains craft demonstrators, musicians, food vendors, authors, Civil War re-enactors, antique cars, vintage farm tools & equipment, children’s games, wagon rides, animals, exhibits, and much, much more!
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s end, a special feature of the 2015 Pioneer Day Festival will be the exhibition of the 58th Regiment North Carolina Troops battle flag. On loan from the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, the historic flag will be on exhibit at Mountain Gateway Museum & Heritage Center for the festival weekend only, from Friday, April 24, through Sunday, April 26.
Soldiers from McDowell, Mitchell, Yancey, Watauga, and Caldwell counties in western North Carolina served in the 58th Regiment during the Civil War and fought under this flag. Part of the Army of Tennessee, the regiment participated in campaigns from Chickamauga in September 1863 to Bentonville, the last major land battle of the Civil War in North Carolina, in March 1865. The regiment also made up part of the Confederate troops surrendered by General Joseph E. Johnston to Union General William T. Sherman at Bennett Place near Durham on April 26, 1865.

Almost exactly 150 years later, some descendants of the original 58th Regiment—now members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Camp 379—will stand guard over the battle flag during its three-day exhibition at the Mountain Gateway Museum & Heritage Center.
The badly deteriorated Augusta Depot Army of Tennessee-pattern battle flag recently was conserved through a partnership between the North Carolina Museum of History and the 26th Regiment N.C. Troops, Reactivated, the state’s largest Civil War re-enactment group. The 26th NCT adopted the battle flag of the 58th Regiment North Carolina Troops as their preservation project in 2009 and spearheaded the fundraising drive to conserve the flag’s fragments. Descendants of the original 58th Regiment provided some of those conservation funds.
Textile Preservation Associates of West Virginia professionally conserved the flag remnants in 2010, and members of the 26th NCT proudly rededicated this rare Army of Tennessee flag during a program at the N.C. Museum of History in January 2011.
During the Pioneer Day Festival weekend at Mountain Gateway Museum, members of S.C.V. 379 and the 22nd North Carolina will be encamped on the museum’s grounds in Old Fort. They will be part of the festival’s events on Saturday, April 25, and will be providing activities for the 150th Commemoration of the Battle of Swannanoa Gap on Sunday, April 26. Those activities will include a Sunday morning church service in the museum’s outdoor amphitheater followed by a 1:00 p.m. program at the Unknown Confederate Soldier Marker on Old U.S. Highway 70 just west of Old Fort. Living history activities will continue throughout the day at the encampment site.
For more information about the 2015 Pioneer Day Festival or the exhibition of the 58th North Carolina battle flag, please contact RoAnn Bishop at Mountain Gateway Museum either by phone at 828-668-9259 or by e-mail at roann.bishop@ncdcr.gov.
For more information about the S.C.V. Camp 379 encampment and other Civil War activities at the museum during the Pioneer Day Festival weekend, please contact Jeff Cordell at 828-659-6377 or cordellcsa@yahoo.com.