35°42′08″N 83°07′20″W / 35.7023°N 83.1222°W
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Mount Sterling is a mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains of Haywood County, North Carolina and Cocke County, Tennessee, located in the southeastern United States. It reaches an elevation of 5,842 feet (1,781 m) above sea level.[1] The summit is topped by an abandoned fire tower that overlooks other nearby peaks.[2]
Mount Sterling crowns Mount Sterling Ridge, a 7-mile (11 km) ridge that gradually descends northward from the flanks of Big Cataloochee Mountain (on the Balsam Mountain crest) to the Pigeon River valley. The ridge divides the Cataloochee area to the east from the Big Creek Valley (which represents the fringe of the Cosby area) to the west. The communities of Mount Sterling, North Carolina, and Waterville, North Carolina are located in the Pigeon River valley at the ridge's northern extreme. Geologically, Mount Sterling consists mainly of Precambrian metamorphic sandstone of the Ocoee Supergroup, formed nearly a billion years ago from ancient ocean sediments.[3] The summit of Mount Sterling is surrounded by a stand of Southern Appalachian spruce–fir forest.
- ^ "Tarheel High Points". Archived from the original on 2006-12-23. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
- ^ Smoky Mountain News Archived 2006-11-13 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Harry Moore, A Roadside Guide to the Geology of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 32.