Mount Kephart is a mountain in the central

Great Smoky Mountains The Great Smoky Mountains (, ''Equa Dutsusdu Dodalv'') are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains, and form part of the Blue Ridge ...

, located in the Southeastern United States. The

Appalachian Trail The Appalachian Trail (also called the A.T.), is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian ...

crosses the mountain's south slope, making it a destination for thru-hikers. The Jumpoff, a cliff on the northeast side of the mountain, has views of the central and eastern Smokies. A stand of

Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, ...

coats the mountain's upper elevations. Mount Kephart is the 22nd highest mountain in the eastern U.S., and the 7th-highest mountain in the state of

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...

. Its

topographic prominence In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contou ...

is drastically reduced, however, due to the mountain's close proximity to two higher neighbors,

Clingmans Dome Clingmans Dome (or Clingman's Dome) is a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina in the southeastern United States. Its name in Cherokee is Kuwahi or Kuwohi (ᎫᏩᎯ or ᎫᏬᎯ), meaning "mulberry place." At an e ...

and Mount Le Conte. Like much of the Smokies crest, Mount Kephart lies on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, in Sevier County, Tennessee and

Swain County, North Carolina Swain County is a county located on the far western border of the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,117. Its county seat is Bryson City. Four rivers flow through the mountainous terrain of Swain County: ...

. The mountain rises nearly above its northern base at Porters Flat, and approximately above its southern base along the Oconaluftee headwaters.

Newfound Gap Newfound Gap (el. ) is a mountain pass located near the center of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States of America. Situated along the border of Tennessee and North Carolina, the state l ...

, at just over , divides Mount Kephart from Fork Ridge (Mt. Collins) to the west. The gap is traversed by U.S. Highway 441, the only paved road crossing the

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, w ...

from north to south.

Geology

Mount Kephart is composed of a type of

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

and metasiltstone known as Anakeesta Formation, which is common throughout the central Smokies. This type of rock is exposed at Charlies Bunion, just to the northeast of Kephart. The Anakeesta Formation rocks are part of the Ocoee Supergroup, formed from ocean sediments nearly a billion years ago. The mountain itself was formed 200 million years ago when the African and North American plates collided and thrust the rock upward during the

Appalachian orogeny The Alleghanian orogeny or Appalachian orogeny is one of the geological mountain-forming events that formed the Appalachian Mountains and Allegheny Mountains. The term and spelling Alleghany orogeny was originally proposed by H.P. Woodward in 195 ...

History

Mount Kephart is named after

Horace Kephart Horace Sowers Kephart (September 8, 1862 – April 2, 1931) was an American travel writer and librarian, best known as the author of '' Our Southern Highlanders'' (a memoir about his life in the Great Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina) ...

, an author and early proponent of establishing a

national park A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...

in the Smokies. The mountain was called "Mount Collins" until the

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

gave it its current name in 1931, reshifting the name " Mount Collins" to the peak between

and

. Before the 1880s, Mount Kephart was known by various local names.Peattie, ''The Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge: The Story of the Southern Appalachians'' (Boston and New York: Vanguard, 1943), 330. Mount Kephart was probably visited and measured by

Arnold Guyot Arnold Henry Guyot ( ) (September 28, 1807February 8, 1884) was a Swiss-American geologist and geographer. Early life Guyot was born on September 28, 1807, at Boudevilliers, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was educated at Chaux-de-Fonds, then ...

during his survey of the Smokies crest in the late 1850s. The name he used for the mountain, however, is uncertain. Guyot listed two mountains between Laurel Top and New (Newfound) Gap as having elevations greater than — Peck's Peak, which Guyot measured at , and Mount Ocona, which Guyot measured at . The former may refer to Peck's Corner, although Peck's Corner isn't between Laurel Top and

, and Guyot would have missed its elevation by a staggering . Other than Mt. Kephart, the only peak between Laurel Top and Newfound Gap higher than is Mt. Ambler, a knob on Kephart's southwest slope. Laura Thornborough, a writer who made many excursions into the Smokies in the 1930s, recalled a stream now known as Icewater Spring, on Kephart's south slope:

Our party reached a good spring on the Carolina side of Mt. Kephart, about three miles (5 km) from our starting point. It had been freshly cleaned out and lined with native rock. The water was clear and icy cold."

A CCC Camp operated on the mountain's southern base in the 1930s, the chimney of which remains near the head of the Kephart Prong Trail. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, this camp was used to house conscientious objectors. Also in this area are the remains of a

WPA WPA may refer to: Computing *Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard *Windows Product Activation, in Microsoft software licensing * Wireless Public Alerting (Alert Ready), emergency alerts over LTE in Canada * Windows Performance An ...

fish hatchery built in 1936.Michal Strutin, ''History Hikes of the Smokies'' (Gatlinburg: Great Smoky Mountains Association, 2003), 122–123.

Access

The

crosses Mt. Kephart's southern slope en route to The Sawteeth and the eastern Smokies. While the trail misses the summit by just over , several clearings between Mt. Ambler and Icewater Spring have views of the south-central Smokies and

. There is a backcountry shelter at Icewater Spring for Appalachian Trail thru-hikers. The Jumpoff Trail crosses the summit en route to the Jumpoff, a high cliff on the mountain's northern slope. The view from the Jumpoff is usually greater than 180 degrees, from Mount Le Conte to northwest to the Balsam Mountains to the southeast. The Jumpoff Trail is just a few feet beyond the

and Boulevard Trail intersection, approximately three miles from Newfound Gap. The Kephart Prong Trail ascends the mountain's south slope to the Kephart Backcountry Shelter. Its trailhead is on U.S. 441 between

and the Oconaluftee Valley. After two miles (3 km), the Kephart Prong Trail forks, one way following the Sweat Heifer Trail to Kephart's southwest slope (near Mt. Ambler), the other continuing on to Dry Sluice Gap (near Charlies Bunion).

References

External links

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Trail Map
— Large file in .pdf format.
Mount Kephart
— Peakbagger.com

— SummitPost.org
Icewater Spring Shelter
— Appalachian Trail backcountry shelter near the summit of Mt. Kephart
Horace Kephart: Revealing an Enigma
— Website dedicated to the legacy of Horace Kephart {{DEFAULTSORT:Kephart, Mount Mountains of Great Smoky Mountains National Park Mountains on the Appalachian Trail Mountains of Tennessee Mountains of North Carolina Southern Sixers Protected areas of Sevier County, Tennessee Protected areas of Swain County, North Carolina Mountains of Swain County, North Carolina Mountains of Sevier County, Tennessee