Although only fifteen miles in length, the Black Mountain range of the Appalachians is the highest mountain range in the eastern United States. The range has a diverse ecology with plants and animals usually found in the northern United States. The area became a tourist destination in the antebellum period. Heavily deforested in the late nineteenth century, the range was the site of the nation's first natural resources preservation movement in the early twentieth century.
Chapter subjects include: initial habitations by Native Americans and settlers, earliest scientific explorations, scientist Elisha Mitchell's exploration of the range, developing tourism in the 1850s, the Clingman-Mitchell highest peak controversy, the geographic explorations of Arnold Guyot, exploitation and preservation at the turn of the century, and the return of tourism.
