Western North Carolina in the context of Buncombe County, North Carolina

In the United States, Southern Unionists were white Southerners living in the Confederate States of America and the Southern Border States opposed to secession. Many fought for the Union during the Civil War. These people are also referred to as Southern Loyalists, Union Loyalists, or Lincoln's Loyalists. Pro-Confederates in the South derided them as "Tories" (in reference to the pro-Crown Loyalists of the American Revolution). During Reconstruction, these terms were replaced by "scalawag" (or "scallywag"), which covered all Southern whites who supported the Republican Party.

Tennessee (especially East Tennessee), Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, North Carolina, and Virginia (which included West Virginia at that time) were home to the largest populations of Unionists. Other (primarily Appalachian) areas with significant Unionist influence included North Alabama, North Georgia, Western North Carolina, the Texas Hill Country, northern Loudoun County in Virginia, North Mississippi, North Texas, the Arkansas Ozarks, and the Boston Mountains in Arkansas. These areas provided thousands of volunteers for Union military service. Western North Carolinians, for example, formed their own loyalist infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments, while West Virginians formed a new Union state admitted in 1863.

The Catawba River is a major river located in the Southeastern United States. It originates in Western North Carolina and flows into South Carolina, where it later becomes known as the Wateree River. The river is approximately 220 miles (350 km) long. It rises in the Appalachian Mountains and drains into the Piedmont, where it has been impounded through a series of reservoirs for flood control and generation of hydroelectricity. The river is named after the Catawba tribe of Native Americans, which lives on its banks. In their language, they call themselves "yeh is-WAH h’reh", meaning "people of the river."

The river rises in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western McDowell County, North Carolina, approximately 20 miles (30 km) east of Asheville. It flows east-northeast, falling over two waterfalls, Upper Catawba Falls and Catawba Falls, before being dammed by Lake James, and joining the Linville River. It passes north of Morganton, then southeast through Lake Rhodhiss and Lake Hickory just north of Hickory, and into the Lake Norman reservoir. From Lake Norman it flows south, passing west of Charlotte, then flowing through the Mountain Island Lake and Lake Wylie reservoirs, where it exits the reservoirs approximately 10 miles (15 km) south of the border between North Carolina and South Carolina. The confluence of the South Fork Catawba River and Catawba River is submerged by Lake Wylie near the NC/SC state line.

The Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, also called the Ridge and Valley Province or the Valley and Ridge Appalachians, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Highlands division. The physiographic province is divided into three sections: the Hudson Valley, the Central, and the Tennessee.

The river valleys were areas of indigenous settlements for thousands of years. In the historic period, the Cherokee people had towns along many of the rivers in western South Carolina and North Carolina, as well as on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains in present-day Tennessee. Similarly, the Catawba people occupied areas along the upper Catawba River in Western North Carolina, to the east of Cherokee County.

Asheville (/ˈæʃ.vɪl/ ASH-vill) is a city in Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the county seat of Buncombe County. It is the most populous city in Western North Carolina and the state's 11th-most populous city with a population of 94,589 at the 2020 census. The four-county Asheville metropolitan area has an estimated 422,000 residents.

The Bible Belt is a region of the Southern United States and the Midwestern state of Missouri (which also has significant Southern influence), where evangelical Protestantism exerts a strong social and cultural influence. The region has been described as the most socially conservative across the United States due to a significant impact of Protestant Christianity on politics and culture. The region is known to have a higher church attendance, more evangelical Protestant denominations, and greater emphasis on traditional religious values compared to other parts of the country. The region contrasts with the religiously diverse Midwest and Great Lakes and the Mormon corridor in Utah, southern Idaho, and northern Arizona.

Whereas the states with the highest percentage of residents identifying as non-religious are in the West and New England regions of the United States (with Vermont at 37%, ranking the highest), in the Bible Belt state of Alabama it is just 12%, while Tennessee has the highest proportion of evangelical Protestants, at 52%. The evangelical influence is strongest in Alabama, Georgia, North Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Missouri, Western North Carolina, the Upstate region of South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Louisiana, northern and eastern Texas, southern and western Virginia, and West Virginia.

Interstate 40 (I-40) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that travels 2,556.61 miles (4,114.46 km) from Barstow, California, to Wilmington, North Carolina. In North Carolina, I-40 travels 420.21 miles (676.26 km) across the entirety of the state from the Tennessee state line along the Pigeon River Gorge to U.S. Highway 117 (US 117) and North Carolina Highway 132 (NC 132) in Wilmington. I-40 is the longest Interstate Highway in North Carolina and is the only Interstate to completely span the state from west to east.

Traveling from west to east, I-40 connects the three major regions of North Carolina—Western North Carolina, the Piedmont, and Eastern North Carolina. In the Piedmont region, I-40 connects the Piedmont Triad and Research Triangle metropolitan regions. Included in these regions are the cities of Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, and Winston-Salem which represent the second through fifth largest cities in the state, respectively. In addition, I-40 connects the cities of Asheville and Hickory in Western North Carolina, Wilmington in Eastern North Carolina, and many smaller communities along its route. The landscapes traversed by I-40 include the Blue Ridge Mountains, the foothills of Western North Carolina, suburban communities, and the urban core of several Piedmont cities, along with Eastern North Carolina farmland. There are five auxiliary Interstates in the state related to I-40: I-140, I-240, I-440, I-540, and I-840. I-40 formerly had one business loop which primarily ran through Winston-Salem and briefly was extended through Greensboro.

This is a list of cities in the United States by elevation. To be included on the list, a place needs to be an incorporated municipality (i.e. a city, town, or village) and it needs to be at an elevation of 3,000 feet (914 m) or higher. In the United States, settlements above 3,000 feet are found primarily on the High Plains, in the Rocky Mountains, and in Western North Carolina. However, since many from the aforementioned locations are not presently listed, this list should not be seen as exhaustive.