Mount Le Conte is one of the most prominent peaks in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, rising to 6,593 feet as the park’s third-highest peak and the highest summit entirely within Tennessee. Its steep climb from near Gatlinburg gives it the greatest relief east of the Rocky Mountains. The mountain is a broad massif with several high subpeaks, spruce-fir forest, and ancient metamorphic rocks formed roughly 800 to 450 million years ago. Little visited until the 1920s, it gained wider attention through Paul Adams during the push for a national park. LeConte Lodge, established near the summit in 1925, helped make it one of the park’s most heavily traveled mountains.