Clingmans Dome is a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeast United States. Its native American name in Cherokee is Kuwahi or Kuwohi which translates to English as mulberry place. The Cherokee People have had strong connections to both the mountain and the surrounding area, long before the land became a national park.

The Clingmans Dome (now known as Kuwohi, see below) is the highest point in Great Smoky Mountains and features a 360 degree 45 foot tall concrete observation tower (built in 1959) accessible with a half mile paved trail. The view from the summit tower offers panoramic views spanning seven states. Both the mountain and the tower are located on the state line between North Carolina and Tennessee, is open year-round, although access from the park road closes from December 01 to March 31.

The US Board of Geographic Names voted in favor of a request from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to officially change the name Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi, according to a news release from the park. The Cherokee name for the mountain translates to “mulberry place.”

On 19 September 2024, the highest peak in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is officially reverting to its original Cherokee name. This name change happened some 165 years after the previous name change from Kuwohi.

Further, the road that was once referred to as the Clingmans Dome Skyway Drive (or just Skyway Drive) has also been renamed to Kuwohi Road.

The balsam woolly adelgid (Adelges piceae) is an insect pest that infests and kills stands of Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) in the spruce-fir zone. The Fraser fir occurs naturally only in the southern Appalachians and previously was the dominant tree at the highest elevations.

The adelgid was introduced on trees imported from Europe, and the fir has little natural defense against it. The insect injects the tree with toxins that blocks the path of nutrients through the tree causing these trees to literally starve to death. As can be seen, thousands of dead Fraser fir snags are all that are left on the highest mountain peaks.

At 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome is the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the highest peak on the Appalachian Trail, the highest point in Tennessee, and the third highest mountain east of the Mississippi. Only Mt. Mitchell (6,684 feet) and Mt. Craig (6,647), both located in Mt. Mitchell State Park in western North Carolina, rise higher.

Clingmans Dome consists of three peaks, two subpeaks, one on each side of the primary peak, which is Clingmans Dome. The western sub-peak is Mount Buckley at elevation 6560 feet and the eastern sub-peak is Mount Love at elevation 6400 feet.

US highway 441 crosses the Smoky Mountains from Gatlinburg, Tennessee to Cherokee, North Carolina. At the point where it crests the Appalachian Mountains is Newfound Gap, a mountain pass with an elevation of 5048 feet, and in the pass has been built the Rockefeller Memorial, the site where the former US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt formally dedicated the Smoky Mountains National Park on 02 September 1940.

A seven mile road leads from US 441 in Newfound Gap to a parking lot that is a half mile climb to the summit. For visitors willing to climb the steep half-mile walk to the summit of Clingmans Dome, there is a 45 foot observation tower, built in 1959, that offers spectacular 360° views of the Smokies and beyond. Although Clingmans Dome Observation Tower is open year-round, the road leading to the parking lot is closed from December 1 through March 31, and whenever else the weather conditions require.

The Cherokee of the South Atlantic area are part of the original nation which descended from the Sons of Abimael, those sons who settled throughout the eastern mountainous and coastal regions of southeast North America. It is the belief that there were the following sons of Abimael: Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Tuscarora) as well as Wendat (Huron), Susquehannock, and others.

The Cherokee Indians are the primary Indigenous people with deep, ancestral ties to the Smoky Mountains, inhabiting the Southern Appalachian region for what some experts believe, thousands of years. Too, it is believed that they maintained permanent settlement near fertile river bottoms, built wooden homes (not teepees), cultivated crops, and utilized vast trade routes throughout Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

The Cherokee referred to the area and the land of the blue smoke, which in their language is Shaconage (pronounced: Sha-kon-o-hey) and that the name for the tallest mountain was called by them, the mulberry place, which in their language is Kuwohi and/or Kuwahi.

During the late 1830s, most of the Cherokee were forced by the US government Indian Removal Policy to vacate their original homeland and move to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Their forced removal was part of the Trail of Tears which in the Cherokee language was Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi, which when translated to English is The trail where they cried.

This Indian removal resulting in the forced relocation of over 16,000 Cherokee people from their ancestral homeland in the southeastern United States to the designated Indian Territory, what is in modern-day is called Oklahoma. This relocation, during 1838 and 1839 resulting in over 4,000 deaths, which were due to exposure, starvation and disease. This forced march

The Cherokee traveled approximately 800 to 1,200 miles depending on which route taken, traveling by foot, horse, and/or wagon during their forced removal to Indian Territory, which journey took several months as they traversed through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas, sometime during adverse weather.

The Cherokee name for the mountain is Kuwahi or Kuwohi, translating to 'mulberry place'. According to a Cherokee myth recorded by ethnologist James Mooney in the late 19th century, the mountain was the home of the White Bear, the great chief of all bears, and the location of one of the bears' council houses. The enchanted lake of Ataga'hi ("Gall Place"), the waters of which could cure wounded bears, was believed by the Cherokee to be located somewhere between Kuwohi and the headwaters of the Oconaluftee River to the east.

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