Mount Kephart is a mountain in the central Great Smoky Mountains, located in the Southeastern United States. The Appalachian Trail crosses the mountain's south slope, making it a destination for thru-hikers. The Jumpoff, a cliff on the northeast side of the mountain, has views of the central and eastern Smokies. A stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest coats the mountain's upper elevations. Mount Kephart is the 22nd highest mountain in the eastern U.S., and the 7th-highest mountain in the state of Tennessee. Its topographic prominence is drastically reduced, however, due to the mountain's close proximity to two higher neighbors, Clingmans Dome and Mount Le Conte. Like much of the Smokies crest, Mount Kephart lies on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, in Sevier County, Tennessee and Swain County, North Carolina. The mountain rises nearly above its northern base at Porters Flat, and approximately above its southern base along the Oconaluftee headwaters. Newfound Gap, at just over , divides Mount Kephart from Fork Ridge (Mt. Collins) to the west. The gap is traversed by U.S. Highway 441, the only paved road crossing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from north to south. Geology Mount Kephart is composed of a type of slate and metasiltstone known as Anakeesta Formation, which is common throughout the central Smokies. This type of rock is exposed at Charlies Bunion, just to the northeast of Kephart. The Anakeesta Formation rocks are part of the Ocoee Supergroup, formed from ocean sediments nearly a billion years ago. The mountain itself was formed 200 million years ago when the African and North American plates collided and thrust the rock upward during the Appalachian orogeny. History Mount Kephart is named after Horace Kephart, an author and early proponent of establishing a national park in the Smokies. The mountain was called "Mount Collins" until the USGS gave it its current name in 1931, reshifting the name "Mount Collins" to the peak between Clingmans Dome and Newfound Gap. Before the 1880s, Mount Kephart was known by various local names. Mount Kephart was probably visited and measured by Arnold Guyot during his survey of the Smokies crest in the late 1850s. The name he used for the mountain, however, is uncertain. Guyot listed two mountains between Laurel Top and New (Newfound) Gap as having elevations greater than — Peck's Peak, which Guyot measured at , and Mount Ocona, which Guyot measured at . The former may