The Arrowhead Monument sits in the town square at the center of Old Fort, a simple stone obelisk with an arrowhead shape that gives it its name. It was erected to commemorate the town's history as a frontier outpost — Old Fort was literally the last settlement before the Blue Ridge in the early years of European settlement in western North Carolina.
The square itself is the heart of the historic district, surrounded by the early 20th-century commercial buildings that earned the area its National Register designation. It is a modest monument in a modest town, but it marks a genuinely significant place in Appalachian history.