Clingmans Dome

Today, we travel deep into the Great Smoky Mountains, where on a fog-covered October morning in 1976, 16-year-old Trenny Lynn Gibson boarded a school bus with 40 classmates for what should have been an ordinary field trip and never came home.

The students were hiking from Clingmans Dome toward Andrews Bolt with simple instructions.

Stay together, remain on the trail, and return to the bus by 3.30 that afternoon.

But when the students gathered to leave, one seat remained empty.

In her pocket, she carried a distinctive white comb, a gift from her mother she treated like a talisman.

On her fingers, the glint of a star sapphire and a diamond ring, treasures from her recent birthday.

The destination was Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the park, followed by a three-mile trek to Andrews Ball.

Their teacher, Wayne Dunlap, a man who would later be haunted by the events of this afternoon until his dying day, gave the instructions, stay on the trail, stay in groups, and be back at the bus by 3.30 p.m. By 3.30 p.m., the bus was nearly full of chattering teenagers, their boots caked in mud, their lungs filled with mountain air.

[on-hold music] There is a mountain in this park that most maps, most guidebooks, and most people's memories still call by a name it wore for less than two centuries.

For hundreds of years before that, and for the Cherokee people whose homeland this is, it was Kuwohi Mulberry Place, the highest point in their entire traditional territory, a place their medicine people climbed to pray and seek guidance.

In eighteen fifty-nine, a surveyor renamed it after a senator and Confederate general who never asked to see it protected and had no real connection to it at all.

In September of twenty twenty-four, after a campaign led by two Eastern Band citizens, the United States Board on Geographic Names voted unanimously to give the mountain its name back.

Officially, formally, on every federal map going forward, it is Kuwohi now.

I wanted to open with that because it is a genuinely rare thing, a real undone piece of the history we covered in the last episode, corrected within the last two years, not a hundred years ago, and it sets the tone for this whole visit.

This park rewards people who know a little bit about what they are looking at before they arrive.

Great Smoky Mountains part two: The Visit.

Story six.

The parking lot near Clingmans Dome was nearly deserted when I arrived.

There were only two vehicles with out-of-state license plates and a mud-covered Jeep that appeared to have been parked there for several days.

I was twenty-three years old, had recently graduated from nursing school in North Carolina, and thought camping alone in the Appalachians would be an ideal way to unwind before beginning my first real job.

That afternoon, I responded exactly as most twenty-three-year-olds would when desperate for information.

I disappeared into an online research rabbit hole.

I began with regional news websites, searching for recent incidents around Clingmans Dome.

Nothing appeared.

And some other miscellaneous things that I've collected, like rocks from all the different mountain peaks where we've buried treasure vases over the years.

So there'll be pieces of Mount LeConte and Clingman's Dome, Rocky Tah.

shining rock.

Those of you who are familiar with the Smoky Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains know these places.

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On the morning of June 18th, 2019, the paved parking lot at Clingmans Dome, the starting point of the Forney Ridge Trail leading into the remote depths of the Great Smoky Mountains, was quiet and clear, as it typically is on early summer mornings when the Anderson family parked their vehicle and prepared for their day hike.

Michael and Dana, accustomed to short outings around Knoxville, saw this trip as an opportunity to take their two children, Evan and Lily, to experience one of the park's most famous trails.

According to footage from the visitor center camera, all four were dressed simply, carrying light backpacks with water and thin towels, minimal gear suitable for a not-too-long hike.

When the map was placed in front of him, Michael immediately became alert.

His eyes continuously darted from the edge of the paper to the door of the room but did not focus on any specific area.

When simply asked to look at the map without describing or answering questions, his recorded eye movements showed clear avoidance of the regions belonging to Forney Ridge and Clingmans Dome, the locations where he was last seen with his family.

In contrast, when his gaze unconsciously moved down to the part of the map depicting Forney Creek Basin, his physiological indicators changed abruptly.

And of course, uh, the Great Smoky Mountains, uh, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, um, which is actually America's most visited national park.

And then there's, uh, Clingmans Dome, which is, uh, Tennessee's highest point at 6,643 feet, which I guess doing the quick math would be 2,214 meters.

And, uh, of course the Appalachian Mountains and, and all that kind of stuff.

Um, so Tennessee has a lot to offer.

I didn't mind it.

We came in from the Clingmans Dome site and worked our way down toward the Forney Creek drainage.

It was wet and steep, and the weather wasn't helping.

By the time we reached Campsite 70, it was getting dark.