Great Smoky Mountains
If you are lucky enough to visit the Knob on an exceptionally clear day (and especially if you have the benefit of binoculars), it may be possible to see one of the most distant features visible from the High Knob Tower: the high peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Great Smokies are often considered a standalone mountain range by those who visit the national park, yet the Smokies are really just one segment of a much larger, complex portion of the Appalachians called the Blue Ridge (Mount Rogers, Whitetop, and Roan Mountain, featured elsewhere on this webpage,
for example, are other summits along the larger Blue Ridge).
The Blue Ridge Province stretches from the northernmost part of Georgia to Pennsylvania, forming the easternmost portion of the Appalachian Mountains. It is home to most of the famed Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia all the way to Maine. The Blue Ridge Province is actually broken into two high ridges, each running southwest to northeast and connected by periodic "cross-ranges," much like rungs in a ladder. The Smokies make up one section of the westernmost ridge of this complex and fall away sharply to the north to the Great Valley, which I-81 and I-75 follow on their way south through the mountains. The same ridge becomes known as the Bald Mountains and, farther north, the Unaka Mountains near Erwin and Johnson City, Tennessee.
The Blue Ridge Province has some of the tallest mountains in Eastern North America, with its highest peak in North Carolina at Mount Mitchell with an elevation of 6,684 feet above sea level. Clingman's Dome in the Smokies (pictured above) is close behind with an elevation of 6,644 feet. There are approximately 125 other peaks along the Blue Ridge that exceed 5,000 feet, with 39 peaks in North Carolina and Tennessee extending higher than 6,000 feet. These highest peaks form the parts of the Smokies that are visible from here on the Knob, since they are capable of rising high enough over the surrounding landscape to be seen at a great distance.
Why is the Blue Ridge so high to begin with? The reason these mountains can be so high is because they contain metamorphic, crystalline rocks that are resistant to weathering. These are completely different rock types than those surrounding the Knob in the Valley and Ridge and Appalachian Plateau Provinces, which are sedimentary rocks like limestone and sandstone that can erode (or weather away) much easier than the hard metamorphic rock. The Blue Ridge has the metamorphic, or changed, rocks thanks to intense heat and pressure during the Appalachians' infancy. This heat and pressure did two things for the Blue Ridge: (i) creating metamorphic rocks, and (ii) providing enough force to lift the mountains to the great heights seen from the Knob in the Great Smokies. This vantage point, in fact, is perhaps one of the best examples of how connected the Appalachians are, even though individual summits may be located hundreds of miles away. The same forces that shaped the Smokies shaped the view here on High Knob - different impacts coming from the same geologic events playing out over millions and millions of years.