Last Updated on September 14, 2026 9:51 am
When First Lady Melania Trump visits Ashe County Tuesday, she'll become the fourth member of the White House to visit the High Country in recent decades.
The most recent prior visit came on Oct. 17, 2011, when President Barack Obama made an unannounced stop in downtown Boone during a three-day bus tour promoting his American Jobs Act. Obama's bus arrived in Boone in the early afternoon, and the president stopped at Mast General Store, where he browsed candy and greeted residents, before continuing on to Wilkes County later that day. The visit came amid a broader push to sell his jobs bill to voters ahead of the 2012 election.
Before that, on July 30, 1998, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore traveled to Ashe County to designate the New River as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers under Clinton's American Heritage Rivers Initiative. The ceremony was held at the Boggs Community Farm, where Clinton thanked North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt for his support of the designation. The New River Watershed spans 21 counties across North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Melania Trump's visit Tuesday will mark the first White House visit to the High Country since Obama's 2011 stop in Boone, and the first visit focused specifically on Ashe County since the Clinton-Gore trip 27 years earlier.
