Clingman's Dome is a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, in the southeastern United States. At an altitude 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 of 2,144 miles (3,499 km) of the Appalachian Trail. It is also the third highest point in the eastern North American mainland, after the closest Mitchell Mountain (6,684 feet or 2,037 meters) and Mount Craig (6,647 feet or 2,026 meters).
Video Clingmans Dome
Deskripsi Edit
Clingmans Dome has two subpeaks: 6,560 feet (2,000 m) Mount Buckley to the west and Mount Love 6,400 feet (1,950 m) to the east. The upstream area of ​​several major rivers lies on the slopes of Clingmans Dome, the Little River on the northern slope, and Forney Creek and Noland Creek (both tributaries of the Tuckasegee River) on the southern slopes. This mountain is located within the Tennessee River Basin.
Clingmans Dome is protected as part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The asphalt road connects it to US Highway 441 (New Gap Road). The 45-foot concrete observation tower (14 m), built in 1959 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, offers panoramic mountain views. The air quality monitoring station, operated by the Environmental Protection Agency, is the second highest in eastern North America.
The South Appalachian pine forest that includes Clingmans Dome occurs only at the highest altitude in the southeastern United States, and has more in common with forests in northern latitudes than forests in adjacent valleys. Clingmans Dome stands protruding over the surrounding terrain, rising almost 5,000 feet (1,500 m) from the base to the summit. The forests in and around Clingmans Dome have suffered massive death from the Fraser spruce caused by non-native insects, adelgid wool balm.
Maps Clingmans Dome
History Edit
The Cherokee name for Clingmans Dome is Kuwa'hi , or "mulberry place". According to the Cherokee myths recorded by ethnologist James Mooney in the late 19th century, the mountain was home to the White Bear, a great bear-bearer, and the location of one of the bear's house houses. The lake is fascinated by Ataga'hi ("Place of the Suspension"), waters that can heal the injured bears, believed by Cherokee to be somewhere between the Clingmans Dome and the upper Oconaluftee River to the East.
In 1789, the action passed by the North Carolina legislature handed what Tennessee now to the federal government. This action improves some of the boundaries between the two along the summit of "Great Iron or Smoky Mountains," which will include the mountain now known as the Clingmans Dome.
The mountain was nicknamed "Smoky Dome" by American settlers who moved from other areas. In 1859, the mountain was named by Arnold Guyot for compatriot Thomas Lanier Clingman (1812-1897), an American Civil War general who explored the area extensively in the 1850s and then spent years promoting it. Guyot named the mountain for Clingman because of a clash between Clingman and a professor at the University of North Carolina, Elisha Mitchell, where the mountain is the highest mountain in the region. Mitchell argues that the summit under the name Black Dome (now known as Mount Mitchell) is the highest, while Clingman asserts that the Smoky Dome is the highest true peak. Guyot decides that the Black Dome is 39 feet (12 m) taller than the Smoky Dome.
In the early hours of June 12, 1946, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress crashed near the top of Clingmans Dome, killing twelve ships.
Geology Edit
Clingmans Dome is part of a geological formation known as the Copperhill Formation. It consists of a large and rough metagreywacke and metaconglomerate. The Lower North Side Clingmans Dome is based on a thick layer of sulphide, quartz-garnet-muscovite phyllite and schist, occurring within metagraywackes and metaconglomerates. Adjacent to and south of the peak, a thin, south-dipping, and disconnected layer of garnetiferous, local graphitic and sulfidic, metasiltstone occurs in the Copperhill Formation.
The Copperhill Formation is part of a larger Ocoee Supergroup, a body of clastic metasedimentary rock formed 560 million years ago. They are out of alignment located on Precambrian granite and gneissic rocks. The sediment originally composed of Ocoee Supergroup accumulates in a series of narrow deep water basins that extend along the entire southern-central Appalachian edge of Tennessee, North Carolina, to Georgia. This basin is a cracking basin formed by Rodinia rifting.
The initial metamorphosis of Ocoee Supergroup occurred about 400 million years ago as a result of Ordovician-Silurian textonism during the Taconic orogeny. Later, the Devonian-Mississippian metamorphosis of this strata occurs during the Acadian orogeny and additional Pennsylvanian to Permian changes by retrograde metamorphism and deformation occurring during orogeny Alleghanian. During the latest part of this orogeny, this Appalachian Appalachian segment is formed by fault faults and folding which elevate this layer as a series of complicated thrust sheets. During the Mesozoic and Kenozoic, the gradual elevation and erosion of this part of the Appalachian Mountains continues.
Although the highland forest plains cover most of the mountains, the Copperhill Formation outcroppings can be found at the Clingmans Dome in the Forney Ridge Parking Lot at the far end of Clingmans Dome Road. This outcrop exposes a large metaconglomerate of Copperhill Formation. In this outcrop, it consists of a thick layer of micro quartz measuring 6 meters (20 feet). It contains rough pebbles of quartz and feldspar, smooth black gray pebble, and concrete egg-shaped up to 30 centimeters (12 inches) in diameter. The compression of this large stone size is easily eroded by weathering to leave a rusted hollow or cavity in the metaconglomerate.
Clingmans Dome ground is mostly deep enough for shallow, well-drained dark brown clay or sandy clay with strong extreme acidity; Breakneck and Pullback series are the most common.
Access Edit
Clingmans Dome is the most accessible mountain peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The 7-mile (11 km) Clingmans Dome Road, which opens annually from April 1 to November 30, starts just past the Newfound Gap and leads the mountain to the Forney Ridge Parking Area, 300 feet (91 m) below the summit. A half-mile (800 m) paved trail leads from a parking lot to a 45-foot (14 m) observation tower on the mountain top. The short, steep trail provides a small visitor's information center and park shop run by the Great Smoky Mountains Association, a dumpster, and many street-side stools. Vault toilet toilet available. This trail offers a glimpse of the often hostile highland Appalachia environments, through the pine-fir woods and accompanying blows and the dead Fraser Firs.
The Appalachian trail crosses the Clingmans Dome, passing just north of the observation tower. A 7.5-mile (12.1 km) foot from the road connects the mountain with the Newfound Gap, and provides the only access to the mountain in winter. A.T. nearest Shelter backcountry is Double Spring Gap Shelter, which is 2.6 miles (4.2 km) to the west near Goshen Prong junction, and Mount Collins shelter, 4 miles (6.4 km) to the east near AT Intersection Sugarland Mountain Trail. Clingmans Dome is the top terminal for some additional hiking trails, including the Forney Ridge Trail (to Andrews Bald) and Forney Creek Trail (to the Benton MacKaye Trail on the shores of Lake Fontana).
The west end of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which links the Smokies to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, is located above Clingmans Dome. It follows the Appalachian Trail as far as 3.1 km (6.1 km) to the east, where it then begins down towards the Blue Ridge Parkway, through the Fork Ridge Trail.
Clingmans Dome Observation Tower Edit
Built in 1959, the 45-foot concrete observation tower (14 m) has a circular observation platform accessed by a spiral road. The ramp length is 375 feet (114 m), and rises at a rate of 12 percent, in harmony with the Clingmans Dome Trail. The platform, 28 feet (8.5 m) in diameter, allows a 360 degree panoramic viewer of the surrounding terrain. Cantilever signs show peaks, mountains, towns, and other features seen in the distance. Depending on the mist, visibility of 20 miles (32 km) in foggy days up to 100 miles (160 km) on a very clear day.
The tower is one of nine observation towers built as part of the "Mission 66" program (1955-1966), an attempt by the National Park Service to improve its facilities to accommodate the entry of visitors to the park during the Second World War. Designed by Hubert Bebb of the Gatlinburg-based architecture firm, Bebb and Olson, the modern design of the tower, especially the use of concrete as the main building material, marks the departure of previous garden structures, which prefer rough elements. Although some criticize Clingmans Dome towers as being too "urban," two other park service observation towers - nearby Look Rock towers along the Foothills Parkway and Shark Valley towers at Everglades National Park - were built using a similar design.
The original Bebb design consists of a massive stone tower topped by a circular platform and fire observation cabin, and accessed by a concrete road. Fred Arnold, head of the Forest and Wildlife Protection branch, refused to include a fire-monitoring cab, arguing that while Clingmans Dome is the highest point in the park, it is not very useful for fire detection purposes. Director of the park services Conrad Wirth objected to the use of inclines, preferring a spiral staircase. After John B. Cabot, head of the East Office of Design and Construction of the Parks Service, assured him of the use of the ramp, Wirth decided the stone tower would not be necessary, declaring a central support column to be sufficient.
The tower was built by Waynesville-based construction company W.C. Norris at a cost of $ 57,000 (equivalent to $ 480,000 in 2017). The ground was damaged in December 1958. After some weather delays, the tower was completed on October 23, 1959.
Gallery Edit
See also Edit
- Mount list in North Carolina
- List of U.S. states by height
References Edit
External links Edit
- Thornberry-Ehrlich, T (2008) Geological Resource Evaluation Report of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Natural Resources Report NPS/NRPC/GRD/NRR - 2008/048. National Park Service, Denver, Colorado. Retrieved 2013-7-28.
- 'My Smoky Mountain Guide: Clingman's Dome'
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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