Baptist farm families established Mars Hill College here in 1856. By 1861, its four-acre campus had three structures: a two-story brick classroom building, a frame dormitory for boys, and a frame teachers' residence. During the war, neighbors, families, and even brothers here were divided in their loyalties to the Southern cause, though many joined the Confederate army during the first two years. Mars Hill was a strategic crossroads for north-south and east-west travel, and a hundred-man detachment from the 64th North Carolina Infantry, called Keith's Detail, was posted here as the first of several Confederate units during the war. The college closed during the last two years of the conflict as conditions in mountain communities deteriorated and support for the Confederacy waned. After July 1863, Home Guard commander Gen. John W. McElroy had his headquarters here, and in April 1864 he wrote North Carolina Gov. Zebulon B. Vance that he had 100 men there to guard against Union Col. George W. Kirk and could not reduce the force because people in the country generally seemed determined to do no more service in the cause. In March 1865, just before Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender in Virginia, Confederate troops left Mars Hill to forage, and Kirk led his 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry (U.S.) into the village and burned the college dormitory and teachers' residence. Mars Hill College survived the war's depredations, but it took forty years to replace what had been destroyed.