Клинманс Дом: Теннесси штатының ең биік шыңы

Mountain, highest peak in Tennessee, United States

Built in 1959, the observation tower features a circular observation platform accessed by a spiral ramp. The ramp is 375 feet (114 m) in length, and rises at a 12 percent grade, in sync with the Clingmans Dome Trail. The platform, 28 feet (9 m) in diameter, allows spectators a 360 degree panorama of the surrounding terrain. Cantilevered signs point out the various peaks, ridges, cities, and other features visible in the distance. Depending on the haze, visibility ranges from 20 mile (32 km) on hazy days to 100 mile (161 km) on very clear days. the tower was completed on October 23, 1959.

Clingmans Dome is the most accessible mountain top in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The 7 mile (11 km) Clingmans Dome Road, which is open annually from April 1 through November 30, The short, steep trail provides a small visitor information center and park store staffed by the Great Smoky Mountains Association. The trail offers a glimpse of the often hostile environment of highland Appalachia, passing through the spruce fir forest and its accompanying blowdowns and dead Fraser Firs. The Appalachian Trail (A. T.) crosses Clingmans Dome, passing immediately north of the observation tower. A 7.5 mile (12 km) leg of the trail connects the mountain with Newfound Gap and provides the only access to the mountain in winter months. The nearest A. T. backcountry shelters are the Double Spring Gap Shelter, which is 2.6 mile (4 km) to the west near the Goshen Prong junction, and the Mount Collins shelter, which is 4 mile (6 km) to the east near the A. T.'s junction with the Sugarland Mountain Trail. Clingmans Dome is the upper terminus for several additional hiking trails, including the Forney Ridge Trail (to Andrews Bald) and the Forney Creek Trail (to the Benton MacKaye Trail on the shores of Fontana Lake). The western terminus of the Mountains to Sea Trail, which connects the Smokies to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is located atop Clingmans Dome. It follows the Appalachian Trail for 3.8 mile (6 km) to the east, where it then begins to descend toward the Blue Ridge Parkway, via the Fork Ridge Trail.

The Cherokee name for Clingmans Dome is Kuwahi or Kuwohi (ᎫᏩᎯ), or "mulberry place." In 1789, an act passed by the North Carolina legislature ceded what is now Tennessee to the federal government. This act fixed a portion of the boundary between the two along the crest of the "Great Iron or Smoky Mountains," which would have included the mountain now known as Clingmans Dome. The mountain was dubbed "Smoky Dome" by American settlers moving in from other areas. In 1859, the mountain was renamed by Arnold Guyot for compatriot Thomas L. Clingman, a Confederate general of the American Civil War who explored the area extensively in the 1850s and then spent many years promoting it. Guyot named the mountain for Clingman because of an argument between Clingman and a professor at the University of North Carolina, Elisha Mitchell, over which mountain was actually the highest in the region. Mitchell contended that a peak by the name of Black Dome (now known as Mount Mitchell) was the highest, while Clingman asserted that Smoky Dome was the true highest peak. Guyot determined that Black Dome was 39 feet (12 m) higher than Smoky Dome. In the early morning hours of June 12, 1946, a Boeing B 29 Superfortress crashed near the summit of Clingmans Dome, killing all twelve aboard. In June 2022, Lavita Hill and Mary "Missy" Crowe, both members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, drafted legislation for the Tribe to support changing the name of Clingman's Dome to Kuwahi ('mulberry place')—the original name given to the area by Cherokees. The resolution describes the area, “Kuwahi or ‘mulberry place’, 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, and then returned to our towns to give guidance and advice.” The Tribal Council of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians passed the legislation, submitted by Hill and Crowe, during its regular session on July 14, 2022, thus lending the Tribe's support for the name change effort. During the meeting, Crowe said the area has been there for Cherokee people for thousands of years. “What we hope to do is to be able to come as a collective community group of elders to us to our younger folks. We see this as an avenue for our younger generation to learn, to relearn – to relearn who and what we are as a people that Creator placed here.” Hill commented, “It just feels good. First of all, I’m very grateful for the support. I’m grateful for Myrtle and Sally to talk about the language. We’re going to move forward so that the mountain presently known as Clingman’s Dome is restored to its original name which we believe is ‘Kuwahi’. Here’s our chance to honor our ancestors. Maybe we can’t take the land back, but we’re going to put the language out there and we’re going to put education out there and more people are going to know that this was Cherokee homeland. Let’s honor them. Let’s give them this name. Let’s respect them in that regard.” On August 2, 2022, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to support the name change, after consultation with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Clingmans Dome is part of a geological formation known as the Copperhill Formation. It consists predominately of massive, coarse grained metagreywacke and metaconglomerate. The lower northern flanks of Clingmans Dome are underlain by thick layers of sulfidic, quartz garnet muscovite phyllite and schist, which occur within the metagraywackes and metaconglomerates. Adjacent to and south of its summit, thin, southward dipping, and discontinuous beds of garnetiferous (locally graphitic and sulfidic)metasiltstone occur within the Copperhill Formation. The Copperhill Formation is part of the greater Ocoee Supergroup, a body of clastic metasedimentary rocks formed 560 million years ago. They unconformably lie upon Precambrian granitic and gneissic rocks. The sediments that originally comprised the Ocoee Supergroup accumulated in a string of narrow, deep water basins that stretched along the entire southern central Appalachian margin from Tennessee, North Carolina, to Georgia. These basins were rift basins formed by the rifting of Rodinia. The initial metamorphism of the Ocoee Supergroup occurred about 400 million years ago as the result of Ordovician Silurian tectonism during the Taconic orogeny. Later, Devonian Mississippian metamorphism of these strata occurred during the Acadian orogeny and additional Pennsylvanian to Permian alteration by retrograde metamorphism and deformation occurred during the Alleghanian orogeny. During the latest part of this orogeny, this segment of the Appalachian Mountains was formed by thrust faulting and folding that uplifted these strata as a series of complexly deformed thrust sheets. During the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, the gradual uplift and erosion of this part of the Appalachian Mountains has continued. Soils of Clingmans Dome are mostly moderately deep to shallow, well drained dark brown loam or sandy loam of strong to extreme acidity; Breakneck and Pullback series are most common.

The climate of Clingmans Dome is hemiboreal (Köppen Dfb, Trewartha Dcb). As with much of the southern Blue Ridge, the area qualifies as part of the Appalachian Rainforest.