MITCHELL, MOUNT

highest peak (6,684 feet ) in North Carolina and in the United States east of the Mississippi River. It is located 20 miles (30 km) northeast of Asheville in the Black Mountains. The peak, covered with a mantle of hardwoods, pine, spruce, and balsam, is within Mount Mitchell State Park and the Pisgah National Forest. Formerly called Black Dome, it was renamed for a University of North Carolina professor, Elisha Mitchell, who, in 1835, surveyed it as the highest point in the eastern United States and who, in 1857, fell to his death on the mountain and is buried at its top.