Kings Mountain Running Festival

We hope you join us for our annual run at Kings Mountain State Park in Clover South Carolina! In 2020 we’re continuing our awesome tag team partnership with the Camp Cherokee YMCA staff to make this event bigger, better, and more inclusive than ever before. With the addition of the kid’s races, 5k, and a 10k to the half and full marathon, there will be something for everyone. This event supports Camp Cherokee and Kings Mountain State Park revitalization efforts and helps get more kids to summer camps.

It was a little army and a little battle, but it was of mighty portent.

In 1780, atop Kings Mountain the Patriot Militia toppled the Royal Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. When the smoke cleared on the mountain’s steep western ridge, the Patriot Militia stood victorious.

“This is a place of inspiring memories. Here less than a thousand men, inspired by the urge of freedom, defeated a superior force entrenched in this strategic position.”
– President Herbert Hoover, October 7, 1930, atop Kings Mountain.

President Teddy Roosevelt once called this small but strategic victory the “turning point of the American Revolution.”

And to this day, the battle’s spirit lives on in the inhabitants of York County, South Carolina. Folks here carry a certain dignity because of their home’s unique place in history. And why shouldn’t they? It’s beautiful and rugged land they live on!

Which is why it won’t surprise you to hear that 230 years after the famous triumph, a small band of runners came directly to Kings Mountain for their own “battle.” A freak snowstorm and a last-minute marathon race cancellation had left them with little choice.

You see, just like the Patriot militia, they had something to prove. And if they could just get a race organizer to meet a few simple demands, they were going to fight for it.

So, they got in touch with Adventure Geek Productions, and inside an hour, the new Kings Mountain Militia was formed, and the battle was on!

Only this time the enemy wasn’t a red coated army. It was the terrain itself. Specifically, 26.2 miles of it. They called the challenge Kings Mountain Marathon.

Yes, this course has hills. Kings MOUNTAIN Running Festival.