The Highest-Elevation Fire Tower East of the Mississippi River

At one time there were 10, strategically scattered across the Great Smoky Mountains. Ten fire towers, all but one constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, manned by wardens during the spring and fall fire seasons to watch for wildfires in and around the Smokies.

Now all but four have been dismantled and removed, their utility in fire detection long since obsolete. Of those, three can still be climbed by hikers seeking to enjoy sweeping vistas: Mount Cammerer, Mount Sterling and Shuckstack Mountain. 

In this and the next issue of Smoky Mountain Living, we’ll continue to explore this trio of historic structures and the peaks they have doggedly stood atop in all kinds of weather since the 1930s. After our journey to craggy Mount Cammerer in the last issue, we now turn to the Mount Sterling tower, situated on the commanding mountain with the highest elevation of the three. 

•••

Mighty Mount Sterling stands as a lofty landmark in the northeastern part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At an elevation of 5,842 feet, Mount Sterling also is the highest peak in the Smokies—and reputedly the Eastern United States—still crowned by a fire tower. Reaching Sterling’s 60-foot-high steel tower, however, is no easy task even when all park roads and trails are open.

The shortest hike to the summit of Mount Sterling is via the steep Mount Sterling Trail that gains about 2,000 feet elevation in just 2.7 miles. Driving to the trailhead at Mount Sterling Gap on the winding, graveled Old N.C. 284 is no bargain either, though somewhat easier from Interstate 40 exit 451 in Tennessee than from exit 20 in North Carolina.

A more interesting hike—if longer and even more strenuous—is the Baxter Creek Trail that begins at a sturdy foot bridge crossing Big Creek, a few steps from the seasonal Big Creek picnic area. The bridge also is the terminus of the 288-mile-long Benton MacKaye Trail, which like the Appalachian Trail begins at Springer Mountain, Georgia, before veering off in a different direction. Hiking the 6.2-mile Baxter Creek Trail, with its initial elevation of only 1,700 feet, is in fact somewhat akin to traveling the entire AT in terms of the varied ecosystems and forest types along the way. But Baxter Creek is not a hike for the faint of heart, especially on a 12.4-mile, out-and-back day trip rather than an overnight, lighter day pack notwithstanding.

Speaking of overnights, the park’s highest-elevation tent campsite (No. 38 on the backcountry roster) is situated within shouting distance of the Mount Sterling Fire Tower. Not so with water; the closest spring is nearly one-half mile away, via a marked spur off Baxter Creek Trail. As with all water sources large and small in the park, drinking water obtained there should be treated. 

As you might imagine, the 360-degree views from atop the tower are sublime—at least when the summit’s weather resembles sublime. Alas, that’s often not the case at Mount Sterling’s soaring elevation. The peak is frequently bathed in clouds even when skies are relatively clear at lower elevations nearby.

In fact, Mount Sterling has served up some of the meanest weather I’ve encountered in the Smokies. Some years ago, on a park volunteer assignment, I set out for the mountain from Big Creek on a cool, misty fall morning. By the time I reached the top, not only the tower but also the broad summit itself featured a thin, treacherous glaze of ice. Ice skates would have been handy … if I had known how to ice skate. 

Several years later, on a fine June morning at Big Creek, I again made the arduous climb to Mount Sterling. On that trip, a fierce thunderstorm up high produced a cold, driving rain that was nearly ideal for also producing hypothermia. I quickly turned back toward the trailhead, with not even a fleeting thought of trying to wait out the storm to climb the coveted tower.

But in 2016—my year of hiking for the book Smokies Chronicle—I enjoyed a fine excursion all the way up on a spectacular September day. And, yes, the 360-degree views from the top of the tower were indeed sublime. 

Mount Sterling’s verdant crown of red spruce trees requires a climb up the fire tower in order to see a panorama of soft, green mountains unfold. So up I went that day—six flights and nearly 80 steps—to reach the top of the tower. With binoculars, I spotted the low-slung lookout tower on nearby Mount Cammerer, just across the state line in Tennessee. Prominent to the west was the Smokies’ second highest peak, Mount Guyot. But my favorite view was to the southwest, where I saw the hulking, 6,155-foot-high Big Cataloochee Mountain, rising broadly amid a sea of green near the junction of Mount Sterling Ridge and Balsam Mountain. Below me, among the handsome red spruce, were a couple of mountain-ash trees adding late-summer color with their reddish-orange berries. 

Mount Sterling also is the location where, in the early 1960s, the destructive balsam woolly adelgid was first discovered in the Smokies. It wrought tremendous devastation over the next several decades in wiping out nearly all the park’s lovely Fraser firs. Now there’s hope that young, healthy firs are regenerating at least some pockets of spruce-fir forest in the park. The big wild card going forward is the impact climate change might have on these rare Southern Appalachian forests.

Alas, evidence of another exotic pest—the hemlock woolly adelgid—that arrived in the Smokies early this century can be seen along Baxter Creek Trail, in the form of dead or dying eastern hemlock trees. The loss of hemlocks, common as they are at various elevations in the Southern Appalachians, is perhaps an even greater ecological tragedy. 

These days, instead of fire detection, the Mount Sterling tower supports a different vital purpose: park emergency communications. For half a century, a power line extending 3½ miles—featuring about 50 poles and requiring a swath eating up about 13 park acres—supplied juice to the radio equipment on the tower. Now, thanks to an inspired suggestion by Duke Energy lineman Jeff Fisher of Haywood County, a solar-panel and battery microgrid powers the equipment. As a result, 13 acres of parkland are being reclaimed by nature and there’s no longer a power line to maintain in what is essentially a harsh climate. The solar array, in contrast, requires far less land area at the base of the tower.  

Legend has it that Mount Sterling got its name long ago from a vein of lead in the nearby Pigeon River that some mistook for silver. Despite the absence of silver on or near the mountain, majestic Mount Sterling and its Depression-era fire tower remain worth visiting anytime the often-unpredictable weather elements are favorable.