Mount Sterling

Mount Sterling, a five thousand eight hundred forty-two-foot peak on the North Carolina-Tennessee line in the Great Smoky Mountains, rises above Cataloochee and Big Creek and is known for its fire tower, spruce-fir forest, and ancient Precambrian sandstone. Its name is traditionally linked to settlers mistaking a streak of lead for silver. During the Civil War, its remote valleys sheltered deserters and its trails served raiders and bushwhackers, while local memory preserves the killing of three prisoners by Confederate captain Albert Teague. Nearby logging and power-company communities later developed at Crestmont and Waterville, and in nineteen sixty-three the balsam woolly adelgid infestation that devastated most Smokies Fraser firs was first noticed here.

North Carolina · United States