The 1780s frame house at Pleasant Gardens, built by Joseph "Pleasant Gardens" McDowell — one of the colonial militia leaders at the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain, a key Patriot victory in the Revolutionary War. The county and the family name come from this side of the line.
A modest historic-house museum, open in summer by appointment. Worth visiting in combination with the Carson House nearby for a sense of the late-18th-century white settlement of these mountains.