Qualla: Clinch Mountain https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/m/p/clinch-mountain-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Clinch Mountain https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain Clinch Mountain: Introduction https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain/ Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0. In an eighteenth-century journal, the explorer Thomas Walker scribbled the earliest known reference: Clinch's River, from one Clinch a hunter. The name stuck, transferred from the river to the mountain that runs alongside it, and the mountain runs a long way. One hundred and fifty miles of unbroken ridge, from Kitts Point in East Tennessee northeast to Garden Mountain near Burke's Garden, Virginia. In all that distance there is exactly one true water gap, the place called Moccasin Gap between Weber City and Gate City, where the ridge is completely bisected and a railroad and three U.S. highways slip through. Everywhere else, if you want to cross, you climb.

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/m/p/clinch-mountain-wp/dnmp-clinch-mountain-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Clinch Mountain: The Wilderness Road https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain/ Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0. Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road to the Cumberland Gap crossed Clinch Mountain at Moccasin Gap. Of all the gaps along all the long Appalachian ridges, this was the one the road needed. Everywhere else the ridge stood as a barrier, separating the Clinch River basin to the north from...

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/m/p/clinch-mountain-wp/dnmp-clinch-mountain-the-wilderness-road.mp3 0:06 2 full Clinch Mountain: Tate Springs and the Robber Barons https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain/ Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0. In the late nineteenth century, the mineral springs in the Grainger County stretch of Clinch Mountain made these slopes briefly famous. Tate Springs grew from a backwoods spa into a destination grand enough that its hotel hosted the Fords, the Studebakers, the Mellons, the Firest...

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/m/p/clinch-mountain-wp/dnmp-clinch-mountain-tate-springs-and-the-robber-barons.mp3 0:06 3 full Clinch Mountain: The Carter Family and the Soundtrack of the Ridge https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain/ Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0. In 1929 the Carter Family recorded My Clinch Mountain Home, fixing this ridge in the bedrock of American country music. The song was not their only tribute. Way Up on Clinch Mountain, a folk piece descended from a seventeenth-century Scottish ballad, was recorded by Woody Guthrie...

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/m/p/clinch-mountain-wp/dnmp-clinch-mountain-the-carter-family-and-the-soundtrack-of-the-ridge.mp3 0:06 4 full Clinch Mountain: The Trail That Wasn't https://qualla.com/clinch-mountain/ Photo credit Brian Stansberry, CC BY 3.0. In the 1970s, planners proposed a seventy-five-mile hiking corridor along the Clinch Mountain ridgeline called the Trail of the Lonesome Pine. It was supposed to run from the Tennessee-Virginia line in Hancock County to a terminus in Grainger County. Construction was nearly compl...

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Image: Brian Stansberry | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/m/p/clinch-mountain-wp/dnmp-clinch-mountain-the-trail-that-wasnt.mp3 0:06 5 full