From Native Americans to land speculators and conservationists, people have long been drawn to Mount Mitchell, namesake of Elisha Mitchell. A geologist, Presbyterian minister, and educator, he left his mark forever on our mountain skyline by proving Mount Mitchell the highest peak east of the Mississippi.
A professor at the University of North Carolina for 32 years, Mitchell was working on a geological survey in 1828 when he concluded that the Black Dome in the Black Mountains, a subrange of the Appalachian, was higher than Grandfather Mountain or New Hampshire’s Mount Washington. Both had been calculated as the highest peak in the eastern United States.
Elisha Mitchell who proved Mount Mitchell to be the highest peak east of the Mississippi River.
Returning to the mountain again and again to support his hypothesis, Mitchell wrote his wife on July 5, 1944, “Tomorrow I am expecting to ascend the Black Mountains, I hope for the last time. I shall probably now reach the highest summit.” And he did… on that occasion and on many subsequent climbs as well.
Climbing a mountain in the 1850s was no easy feat. First, Mitchell had to spend a week traveling by one-horse wagon from Chapel Hill to Morganton. Making the climb, usually alone, he had to carry water and necessary supplies for survival in addition to the fragile barometer he used in making calculations. The steep terrain and dense undergrowth prevented a horse making the climb so Mitchell often ascended rugged areas on his hands and knees.
In 1857, Mitchell’s former student, Thomas Lanier Clingman, declared that Smoky Dome on the NC/Tennessee border was actually the highest peak east of the Mississippi. Mitchell was so incensed, he decided to make a final climb to refute Clingman’s spurious claim. His research again proved Mitchell right: the Black Mountain peak was 39 feet higher than Clingman’s Dome which was later confirmed as the third highest mountain east of the Mississippi.
Unfortunately, the confirmation cost Mitchell his life. He fell to his death on June 27 shortly after 8 p.m. when he slipped on a rocky ledge above the 20-foot Mitchell Falls. He hit his head as he fell and drowned in the fall’s deep cold pool.
It was not until a half century later in 1915 that the North Carolina legislature recognized his achievements by naming the mountain and its 1,996 surrounding acres in his memory.