‘Looking glass of sorts’ now marks western end of NC’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail
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- The monument atop Kuwohi peak now marks the western end of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.
- Preston Farabow made the Kuwohi monument from 700 pounds of Smoky Mountain gray marble.
- Friends of the Smokies donated the monument, which sits near the Kuwohi observation tower.
Three years ago, a monument marking the eastern end of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail was unveiled at Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the Outer Banks. The main feature was a large circle cut from the center that frames the park’s massive sand dunes.
Now there’s a monument at the western end of the trail, atop Kuwohi peak in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s made of stone instead of wood, with a big bronze plaque with information about the 1,175-mile trail.
But it, too, has a big hole in the middle. Preston Farabow, the Knoxville, Tennessee, artist who made the monument from 700 pounds of Smoky Mountain gray marble, said he was inspired by its counterpart by the sea.
“A looking glass of sorts, framing our beautiful piece of the world and beckoning the viewer to explore beyond,” Farabow said at the unveiling ceremony on April 9. “I was born in North Carolina and live in Tennessee. To be able to create something significant like this right on the state line of my home states was really an overwhelming opportunity.”
Farabow’s plaque also echoes the eastern monument, each with their tops contoured to represent the state’s mountains, Piedmont and coastal plain.
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The new monument was donated by Friends of the Smokies, a nonprofit that supports the nation’s most visited national park. The effort was led by Danny Bernstein, an avid hiker and outdoors writer from Asheville who hiked the entire Mountains-to-Sea Trail in 2011 and found it hard to locate the western end.
“This marker means a lot,” Bernstein said at the ceremony. “It is beautiful. It is obvious. It has a very nice description of what the MST is on a plaque. Now we’ll have more people seeing this marker and thinking about the trail starting here. And people will want to get their picture taken at the marker looking through the stone.”
The monument is yards from the observation tower at Kuwohi, the 6,643-foot mountain formerly known as Clingmans Dome that is the highest point in the national park.
For more information about the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, including maps, go to mountainstoseatrail.org/.
This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 1:40 PM with the headline "‘Looking glass of sorts’ now marks western end of NC’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail."
