re: Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains is now Kuwohi after Cherokee request is approved

Yeah, it was a terrible idea.
So what, get over it.


Reservations have their own government, law enforcement, and most have tons of money.

So what's changed?


But let's go rename an observatory...


Honestly, no one GAS either way, I just think these self-serving gestures are ridiculous, but the general population isn't too bright so...

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Thomas Clingman was not a significant enough person to have such a landmark named after him.

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Did more than 99.99% of the slapdicks who post here.

Notably you included.

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So...Did she give you any?

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Not even a sniff LOL....

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But let's go rename an observatory...

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Clingmans Dome is a mountain.

Walked to the top last year. Would not recommend going from sea level one day to doing this the next.

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I damn near died on the road to Clingman's Dome when I was about 13 years old.

A group of us from school spent 3 days camping at Cades Cove and woke up on the morning of the 3rd day to a pretty serious snowstorm. My dad chaperoned this trip and the 4 kids with us talked him into driving us to Clingman's dome to take in the view in the snow. The road going up was closed and folks were skiing and tubing. An older man with a tube asked us if we wanted to give it a try and I, being in the presence of a young lady I was madly in love with, said "Ill do it".

I was the hero of the group...the other boys cheered me on as I started up the hill and the young lady eyed me like a knight on a white stallion....even threw me a kiss as I started up the road. I went a little way past the first curve, just out of sight of my friends, and hopped on that tube and that old man must have known Clarke Griswald because that damned tube started down that hill at an excessive rate of speed and was accelerating WAY more than one would think was possible.

I managed to navigate that first turn...as it turned out I went from one should to the other like a drift car (my friends told me this later....I was unaware because I was busy trying to stop and had my eyes closed to boot).

Apparently, some sort of wild animal in the vicinity was also being massacred while this was happening because my friends and several people on that mountain mentioned the screams they heard as I went through that curve. Some insinuated it was me making those noises, but I know damned well it was not because I have never been able to hit the high notes and decibel levels they described AND I was, as I say, occupied with not dying and was in no position to make any sort of commentary on what was going on in the moment.
Anyway I managed to survive the curve through shear athletic ability and nerve....and a metric ton of luck...and was headed straight toward my friends at the bottom of the hill.

Apparently they were of the opinion that I intended to come to a halt short of them because they just stood their like statues and watched as I approached.....until they realized I was about to bowl them over like a PBA roller throwing a strike. They scattered like quail but unfortunately the young lady and one other boy, having little experience with snow, did not have the footing to make good their escape and I plowed through them, sending them flying and amazingly not slowing me down in the least.
Looking back I would have thought the young lady would have tried to slow me down but I am not sure she didn't give a good kick as she went flying overhead and increased my velocity down that damned hill of death.
I did not have time in the moment to consider this...I was headed straight for the chrome bumper of my Dad's truck. To this day I can see the sun glinting off that solid 1970s hunk of chromed American steel...so shiny I saw a madman staring at me from eye level which was, to my consternation, my own reflection. This jarring site is partially responsible for my being alive today...I flinched just enough to swing clear of the truck only to realize that I may have been better off piling up against it...because all that was beyond it was a fricking cliff....nothing but the tops of pine trees headed toward me at about the speed of sound and as soon as me and that tube went over that cliff we parted ways......it flew one way, I flew the other and we both fell at least 50 feet through those pine limbs.
This wasn't a big deal for the tube, it being made of rubber, full of air and unencumbered by my weight it softly hit the ground and slid gracefully to a stop against another pine tree. Me, being made of skin and bone, did not softly hit the ground...I pile dived into the ground at the speed of sound (if those people who accused me of screaming like a girl were right because I never heard any screaming, either it never happened or I was leaving it in my wake).
Regardless of what grown adults and what I thought were my friends opinion on any screaming that occurred my fun was not quite over....unlike the tube one pine tree was not enough to halt my momentum, it took several of them bouncing over my entire body to slow me to a stop. There I was, lying on the side of a mountain, beat to near death by the earth and pine trees....amid a deafening silence....not a bird, no human voices, nothing....just me lying motionless against a pine tree staring at the sky....when I realized I was unable to breath....I had had the wind knocked out of me....if you have never had that happen I do not suggest trying it, it is not as enjoyable as it sounds.
I am lying there, trying to breath, no doubt making some small gasping noises, nothing like the death rattles those "friends" of mine told everyone in school about, when a gang of folks rush up and, disappointed that they don't have a story about a dead kid to tell their friends when they get home, they help me up, brush me off and lead me back up that cliff.
We get back to the top and my Dad said "Damn son, that looked like fun. Where's that man's tube?".
I think him or the man saw in my eyes that I couldn't care less about that man's tube and the man says "I see it" and trots off to get it.
My dad asks me and the other kids if anyone else wants to go tubing and surprisingly enough everyone suddenly remembered they had pressing issues back home. We climbed into the bed of the truck, closed the door to the camper shell, and Daddy drove us back to Atlanta. You'd have thought I was in the camper with a bunch of lunatics judging by the descriptions of my tubing on the way home. There were 4 of them telling it and there were at least 7 stories, none of them remotely close to the truth, and none of the sounds they described could have happened or I would have heard some of them. Even that young lady had been stricken with some sort of mental collapse and could not quit giggling about it.

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Can't they at least make it some Indian name that's easy to pronounce? Something like, Two Dogs fricking?

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or $5dollar mountain. lol u seem triggered

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We got other tribe settlements in the area that were wiped out by the Cherokee. shite happens, people rename things. Neither of us were the first here.

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I don’t give a shite what they call it but the Indians love to raise a stink whenever possible to thumb their noses at the “white man.”

Ask walleye fishermen in Wisconsin and Minnesota about their spearing during the spawn that decimates the fish population.

It's vv lovely up there...

tourists from ohio