page_title: Mount Kephart
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mount Kephart / History
caption_attribution_description: Looking northeast from the Jumpoff, a cliff on the northeastern slope of Mount Kephart in the Great Smoky Mountains.
context_page_description: Mount Kephart is a mountain in the central Great Smoky Mountains, located in the Southeastern United States. The Appalachian Trail crosses the mountain's south slope, making it a destination for thru-hikers. The Jumpoff, a 1,000-foot cliff on the northeast side of the mountain, has views of the central and eastern Smokies. A stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest coats the mountain's upper elevations.
  Mount Kephart is the 22nd highest mountain in the eastern U.S., and the 7th-highest mountain in the state of Tennessee. Its topographic prominence is drastically reduced, however, due to the mountain's close proximity to two higher neighbors, Clingmans Dome and Mount Le Conte.
  Like much of the Smokies crest, Mount Kephart lies on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, in Sevier County, Tennessee and Swain County, North Carolina. The mountain rises nearly 4,000 feet above its northern base at Porters Flat, and approximately 3,400 feet above its southern base along the Oconaluftee headwaters. Newfound Gap, at just over 5,000 feet, divides Mount Kephart from Fork Ridge to the west. The gap is traversed by U.S.
context_section_description: Mount Kephart is named after Horace Kephart, an author and early proponent of establishing a national park in the Smokies.  The mountain was called "Mount Collins" until the USGS gave it its current name in 1931, reshifting the name "Mount Collins" to the peak between Clingmans Dome and Newfound Gap.  Before the 1880s, Mount Kephart was known by various local names.
  Mount Kephart was probably visited and measured by Arnold Guyot during his survey of the Smokies crest in the late 1850s.  The name he used for the mountain, however, is uncertain.  Guyot listed two mountains between Laurel Top and New (Newfound) Gap as having elevations greater than 6,000 feet (1,800 m) — Peck's Peak, which Guyot measured at 6,232 feet (1,900 m), and Mount Ocona, which Guyot measured at 6,135 feet (1,870 m).  The former may refer to Peck's Corner, although Peck's Corner isn't between Laurel Top and Newfound Gap, and Guyot would have missed its elevation by a staggering 1,300 feet (400 m).  Other than Mt. Kephart, the only peak between Laurel Top and Newfound Gap higher than 6,000 feet (1,800 m) is Mt. Ambler, a knob on Kephart's southwest slope.
  Laura Thornborough, a writer who made many excursions into the Smokies in the 1930s, recalled a stream now known as Icewater Spring, on Kephart's south slope:
  Our party reached a good spring on the Carolina side of Mt. Kephart, about three miles (5 km) from our starting point.  It had been freshly cleaned out and lined with native rock.  The water was clear and icy cold." 
  A CCC Camp operated on the mountain's southern base in the 1930s, the chimney of which remains near the head of the Kephart Prong Trail.  During World War II, this camp was used to house conscientious objectors.  Also in 
  this area are the remains of a WPA fish hatchery built in 1936.
caption: Looking northeast from The Jumpoff, with characteristic blue haze on the left
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