Clingmans Dome is no more, as federal authorities on Wednesday approved affixing the Cherokee name Kuwohi to one of Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s most iconic features.
The vote by the Board on Geographic Names’ Domestic Names Committee to redesignate the 6,643-foot-high granite dome upholds its traditional Cherokee honorific, which means “mulberry place.” The renaming also strips away the recognition previously awarded to Thomas Clingman, a 19th-century North Carolina lawmaker and Confederate general during the Civil War.
“The Great Smoky National Park team was proud to support this effort to officially restore the mountain and to recognize its importance to the Cherokee People,” the park’s superintendent Cassius Cash said in a statement, adding that “the Cherokee People have had strong connections to Kuwohi and the surrounding area, long before the land became a national park.”
The renaming caps an effort begun in 2022 by two enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Lavita Hill and Mary Crowe. Principal Chief Michell Hicks submitted the formal name-change application last January, including more than 150 pages of background materials and letters of support from local governments and others.
