Mount Mitchell

At 6,684 feet this is the highest peak of the Appalachians and the highest point in mainland North America east of the Mississippi. The nearest higher ground is in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the foothills of Colorado. It stands in the Black Mountain subrange near Burnsville, about nineteen miles northeast of Asheville, protected by a state park and surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest. The Cherokee name is Attakulla. It ranks thirty-first in the country by topographic isolation.