History
Arnold Guyot first measured the elevation of Old Black on his survey of the crest of the Smokies in the late 1850s. Guyot measured the mountain's elevation at 6,373 feet (1,942 m), missing the modern measurement by just three feet. While Guyot initially named the mountain "Mount Henry" after the director of the Smithsonian Institution, "Old Black" was the name that stuck.
Laura Thornborough, a writer who made several excursions to the area in the 1930s, recalled the thick spruce forest that dominates in the Eastern Smokies:
As the A.T. swings around the Tennessee side of Guyot, it passes through what is believed to be the densest stand of spruce and balsam in the Great Smokies.
In 1984, an F-4 Phantom fighter plane crashed into the ridge between Inadu Knob and Old Black. Some of the wreckage from this crash remains scattered about the area, with a number of fragments located in an area along the Appalachian Trail about a quarter-mile west of the trail's junction with the Snake Den Ridge Trail. A short spur trail winds through the wreckage.
In 1935, the CCC constructed a segment of the Appalachian Trail across the western slope of Old Black.
Read more about this topic: Old Black (Great Smoky Mountains)
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