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Mulberry place
The Cherokee name means mulberry place, and the bears held council there
The Cherokee name for the mountain is Kuwahi or Kuwohi, which means mulberry place. In a myth recorded by James Mooney, it was home to the White Bear, great chief of all bears, and held one of the bears' council houses. Cherokee medicine people visited it to pray and seek guidance.
A dispute over height
An argument over the highest peak gave the mountain its old name in 1859
Settlers called the mountain Smoky Dome. In 1859 the geographer Arnold Guyot renamed it Clingmans Dome for Thomas L. Clingman, who had measured it in 1858 without setting foot on it. Clingman and a professor, Elisha Mitchell, argued over which peak was highest. Guyot found that Black Dome was 39 feet higher.
39 feetthe height by which Black Dome beat Smoky Dome
The tower
The concrete tower was finished on October 23, 1959, after weather delays
Hubert Bebb drew a stone tower with a fire cabin on top. Fred Arnold rejected the cabin, and Conrad Wirth, won over on the ramp, decided a single central column would suffice. Ground was broken in December 1958. After weather delays and controversy over its looks, the tower was completed on October 23, 1959.
The new name
In 2024 the mountain's Cherokee name became its official name
In June 2022 Lavita Hill and Mary Crowe of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians drafted legislation to back restoring the name. The Tribal Council passed it on July 14, 2022. The National Park Service strongly supported the change, and the name Kuwohi took effect on September 18, 2024.
“...is the highest point in our area and has significance to us as Cherokees as it was visited by medicine people who prayed and sought guidance from the Creator regarding important matters facing our people”
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, in its 2022 resolution
June 1946
In 1946 a B-29 bomber crashed near the summit and killed all twelve aboard
In the early morning hours of June 12, 1946, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress crashed near the summit of the mountain, killing all twelve aboard.
Day 2, midday
It comes after Newfound Gap. Then Mingus Mill.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Kuwohi, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.