File:Visitor Center, Clingmans Dome (Kuwahi), Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Swain County, NC - 52394010163.jpg

English: Known to the Cherokee as Kuwahi or Kuwohi, meaning the “place of mulberries”, Clingman’s Dome is one of the tallest peaks in the eastern portion of North America, with a summit of 6,643 feet, and is the tallest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the tallest peak in Tennessee (which shares the mountain with North Carolina), the highest elevation along the Appalachian Trail, and the third-tallest peak in the Appalachian Mountains, after Mount Mitchell and Mount Craig, both of which sit approximately 70 miles to the northwest. The mountain was initially known to European settlers as “Smoky Dome”, but was renamed by Arnold Guyot in 1859 after senator Thomas Lanier Clingman, whom has almost no personal connection to the mountain besides claiming it as the tallest mountain in the Appalachian range (which turned out to be wrong). Clingman, only two years after having the mountain named for him, was kicked out of the senate due to North Carolina’s secession and his refusal to give up his seat in the senate despite his support of the Confederacy, and serving as a general in the Confederate Army. This history and the controversial status of Clingman as a historical figure who held strong Confederate sympathies was brought under increased scrutiny in more recent times, which has led to a movement to revert the mountain back to it’s Cherokee name of “Kuwahi.” The the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians passed a resolution in 2022 proposing this change. Between US Highway 23/441 and the mountain is a road with multiple pull-off viewing areas, which terminates at a parking lot with a half-mile trail to the summit, at the base of which is a stone and log visitor center built in a rustic Arts and Crafts style. At the top of the mountain is a modern concrete Observation Tower, designed by Bebb and Olson, which was built in 1958-1959 as part of the National Park Service’s Mission 66 initiative. The tower features a spiraling concrete ramp that ends at a mushroom-like circular porch structure below a circular concrete canopy supported by a single concrete column. The observation tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.