Kuwohi
— — the mulberry place, restored to its name.
Not only on a wall.
“The high point of the Great Smoky Mountains, on the line between Tennessee and North Carolina. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians call it Kuwohi, the mulberry place. The federal name was restored in September 2024 after a petition from the tribe. A spiral concrete tower at the summit gives a long view in every direction; the spruce-fir forest beneath it is one of the rarest in the Eastern United States.
Kuwohi, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kuwohi rises to 6,643 feet on the ridge that divides Tennessee and North Carolina inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is the highest point in Tennessee and the highest point along the entire 2,194-mile Appalachian Trail. The summit name was officially restored from Clingmans Dome to Kuwohi in September 2024 by the US Board on Geographic Names, following a petition from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. *Kuwohi* is a Cherokee word meaning mulberry place. The site has been sacred to Cherokee people for centuries, long before the federal park surrounded it.
The summit sits in a remnant spruce-fir forest, a southern Appalachian ecosystem more typical of Canada than of Tennessee. Average summer temperatures run about ten to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Gatlinburg, twenty road miles below. Clouds wrap the ridge on more than half the days of the year; the National Park Service notes that the view from the tower is obscured by fog roughly two days in three. The Fraser firs on the slopes have been damaged by the balsam woolly adelgid, an introduced insect, since the 1960s.
The summit is reached by a paved seven-mile spur road from Newfound Gap, then a steep half-mile walk to the observation tower built in 1959. The road closes from 1 December to 31 March; in winter the tower can still be reached on foot or skis. Parking is limited and often full on autumn weekends; the Park Service operates a paid parking tag system across the park year-round. Admission to Great Smoky Mountains National Park itself is free. The closest gateway towns are Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Cherokee, North Carolina.