Clingmans Dome (or Clingman's Dome) is a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, in the southeastern United States. At an elevation of 6,643 feet (2,025 m), it is the highest mountain in the Smokies, the highest point in the state of Tennessee, and the highest point along the 2,174-mile (3,499 km) Appalachian Trail. East of the Mississippi River, only Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet / 2,037 metres) and Mount Craig (6,647 feet / 2,026 metres) are higher.
Clingmans Dome is protected as part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A paved road, closed from December 1 through March 31, connects it to U.S. Highway 441 (Newfound Gap Road). The concrete observation tower, built in 1959, offers a panoramic view of the mountains in every direction. An air quality monitoring station, operated by the Environmental Protection Agency, is the second highest in eastern North America.
The Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest which covers Clingmans Dome occurs only at the highest elevations in the southeastern United States, and has more in common with forests at northern latitudes than with the forests in the adjacent valleys. Clingmans Dome stands prominently above the surrounding terrain, rising nearly 5,000 feet (1,500 m) from base to summit.
Read more about Clingmans Dome: History, Geology, Access, 1946 Aircraft Crash
Famous quotes containing the word dome:
“The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every evening. Water ran down hill and birds nested.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)