McDowell High School is a public high school locate in the mountains of western North Carolina in the small town of Marion. Known for its NJROTC program, successful basketball teams, musical directors, and computer programming classes, the 4A school of roughly 1,400 students is the only high school in McDowell County. The school has its own student run newspaper, The Iliad, and its own student-run literary magazine, 'The Muses'.