Peak Honoring Confederate Reverts to Cherokee Name

Kuwohi is the highest point in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Sep 18, 2024 5:25 PM CDT
Peak Honoring Confederate Reverts to Cherokee Name
Members of the media walk down from Clingman's Dome tower while waiting for a total solar eclipse to begin in Great Smoky Mountains National Park at Clingmans Dome on Aug. 21, 2017.   (Caitie McMekin/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP, File)

The highest peak in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is officially reverting to its Cherokee name more than 150 years after a surveyor named it for a Confederate general. The US Board of Geographic Names voted on Wednesday 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," the AP reports.

"The Cherokee People have had strong connections to Kuwohi and the surrounding area, long before the land became a national park," Superintendent Cassius Cash said in the release. "The National Park Service looks forward to continuing to work with the Cherokee People to share their story and preserve this landscape together." Kuwohi is a sacred place for the Cherokee people and is the highest point within the traditional Cherokee homeland, according to the park. The peak is visible from the Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Great Smoky Mountains National Park closes Kuwohi every year for three half-days so that predominantly Cherokee schools can visit the mountain and learn its history.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, is America's most visited national park, per the AP, and Kuwohi is one its most popular sites, with more than 650,000 visitors per year. The peak became known as Clingmans Dome following an 1859 survey by geographer Arnold Guyot, who named it for Thomas Lanier Clingman, a Confederate brigadier general as well as a lawyer, US representative, and senator from North Carolina, according to the park. The name restoration proposal was submitted in January by Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks.

(More Great Smoky Mountain National Park stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X