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The Appalachian Trail’s highest peak is officially reclaiming its original Cherokee moniker after a US government board voted to rename Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi.
In a press release, the National Park Service (NPS) said that the United States Geological Survey’s Board on Geographic Names voted on Wednesday to approve the change request from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI). In a press release, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent Cassius Cash said that the park had been “proud to support this effort to officially restore the mountain and to recognize its importance to the Cherokee People.”
“The Cherokee People have had strong connections to Kuwohi and the surrounding area, long before the land became a national park,” wrote Cash. “The National Park Service looks forward to continuing to work with the Cherokee People to share their story and preserve this landscape together.”
At 6,644 feet, Kuwohi, which translates to “mulberry place,” is the highest point both in the Smokies and on the Appalachian Trail, and holds spiritual and ceremonial significance for the Cherokee people. The United States government dubbed it Clingmans Dome after geographer Arnold Guyot surveyed it in 1859. The source of the name was Thomas Lanier Clingman, a member of congress from North Carolina who went on to fight as a general for the Confederacy. Both Guyot and Clingman were publicly and unabashedly racist; Guyot’s published writing linked topography and geography to “the superiority of certain races.”
The current push to redesignate the mountain began in 2021 when two citizens of the EBCI, Levita Hill and Mary “Missy” Crowe, began advocating for it. That July, the tribal council of the EBCI passed a resolution calling for the change.
“The name Clingman is not derogatory in and of itself, but the history shows the act of changing the name of Kuwahi to Clingmans Dome was racist and the racist action should be acknowledged and corrected,” the resolution read, using an alternate spelling of the name.
Kuwohi is the latest of several prominent mountains in the United States named after racist, murderous, or otherwise objectionable figures to regain their indigenous names or gain new names. In September 2023, the Board on Geographic Names approved a request to rename Colorado’s 14,271-foot Mt. Evans to Mt. Blue Sky; the mountain’s namesake, Governor John Evans, approved and helped cover up the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, in which the US army killed more than 200 noncombatant members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. In 2022, Yellowstone National Park renamed Mt. Doane to First Peoples Mountain; Gustavus Doane, who inspired that peak’s name, led a similar massacre in 1870 that killed at least 173 members of the Piegan Blackfeet.
From 2024