In 1860 Banner Elk was a small mountain community in Watauga County, now Avery County, then called Banner’s Elk for the local Banner family and the Elk River. During the last years of the Civil War, it became part of an organized network of safe houses for escaped Union prisoners of war and people fleeing Confederate conscription. Local residents guided them through Blowing Rock, across Grandfather Mountain, and into Banner Elk, where other guides led them onward to safety in Kentucky and Tennessee. Among those guides were Daniel Ellis, Harrison Church, Lewis Banner, and Keith and Malinda Blalock. Lewis B. Banner, a slave owner and Unionist whose three sons served in the Federal army, often gave food and shelter to escapees while they waited for guides. His son Samuel H. Banner, a veteran of the 5th Ohio Infantry, built the house after his discharge in February 1864. A laurel thicket by the river called the Land of Goshen served as a hiding place for escapees and draft evaders. In January 1865, a raid on the Confederate Home Guard camp along Cove Creek in Sugar Grove began in Banner Elk, and after Union raiders captured Company B of the 11th Battalion North Carolina Home Guard, they returned there with a dozen prisoners, kept them nearby overnight, and then sent them across the lines into Tennessee.