In the table, click on the county name to view the Google map and get a list of maps for that point. At the bottom of the table are waypoint files for uploading to your GPS. Latitude and longitude are in the WGS84 datum and extrapolated from USGS 7.5' topo maps or provided by the DEM data.

digitial elevation data discussion ...
White county has 26 possible high points based on contours of the DeRossett quadrangle.

Andy writes:

White   spot elevation 2 miles east of DeRossett        2,009   DeRossett
        16 areas within 2 miles of 2009 spot elevation  2,000+  DeRossett
        9 areas within 1 1/4 miles of Stringtown        2,000+  DeRossett

We have used 10m USGS/NASA digital elevation data (quad/UTM DEMs or better seamless server) to resolve the multi high point counties. For White county, the 10m DEM shows the high point (35.87875 -85.31523) at 2010'. (See Google map with DEM grid over candidates -- zoom out to see all areas.) Another candidate, was the contour with the 2009' spot elevation, but the DEM data reported only 2005.9 for the high point in that contour. In 2016, TN did additional LiDAR elevation surveys that included White county. From the TN LiDAR DEM data, the digital high point for White county is 2017.2' at 35.878792,-85.315431. The next closest contour is at 2013.2' at 35.886713,-85.303809.

As another example, see the 10m DEM grid over the two candidate areas for Sullivan county. The Rutherford county high points illustrate points on the county line -- digital high point 1366.8' near Brown Cemetery. Or is that in the adjacent county, how accurate is the line on the topo map? The 10m DEM high point might actually be 1366.7' near Harrold Cemetery. From the 2004 LiDAR survey of Rutherford county, the high point is 1366' at Harrold Cemetery 35.71839,-86.23124. The 10m DEM data revealed a high point (35.21757 -89.7475) for Shelby county that was not on Andy's list -- and at 432'. Tom Owen reports this is a man-made (overpass), so we have not listed it as the high point. On the other hand, we did find some bad DEM (or topo?) data in the Dyersburg quad in Dyer county, TN. Topo map has a couple of 500 and 510 contours and one 515 spot elevation. The max elevation from the 10m DEM for the quad is only 476' (at the 515 spot elevation). See visual evidence. The 2016 DEM data from seamless server has the spot elevation at 509.4' at 36.071538,-89.494581, and further north 512.3' at 36.104059,-89.491718 Looking at the satellite image, it's possible the high point has been bull-dozed down. TN LiDar (2012) has Dyer county high point at 36.143024,-89.382625 (516.6'), the former Millsfield fire tower site.

Henry and Lake county had no quad-based 10m DEM data for the areas of interest, but USGS seamless server had 3m DEM data for both Henry and Lake county. (Example: Lake County, view the map, and see the new HP is the southwest cluster of red +'s. If you zoom in and switch to satellite view, you'll see they probably built a hill for the water tank!) This 3m data is based on LiDAR (see bullet list below), but LiDAR elevation data for TN is presently only available for a few areas: Anderson county, Rutherford county (2004), Hamilton County, Davidson County, City of Franklin, Smoky Mountain, along the Mississippi and the NC boundary (see map or enable the "Elevation Availability" layer in the national map viewer). TN GIS in 2011 developed a LiDAR business plan and technical specs for conducting TN LiDAR survey (12.5 cm veritcal RMSE at 1m spacing) at $10.4 million (2014-2018). From recent LiDAR data, strip mining has eliminated Burge Mountain as the Scott County digital high point, being replaced by Guinea Hill Knob.

Thunderhead Mountain, Blount County high point, has a USGS benchmark disk that reports elevation of 5527' (no USGS datasheet?). The USGS DEM data lists the Thunderhead high point as 5533.7' at 35.56862,-83.70622. The recent NC LiDAR survey reports high point of 5524.75' at 35.56862,-83.70622 (bare earth).

SRTM data (30m) is also available from earthexplorer.usgs.gov and is more recent (2000), but is based on "first-return" data and may have inaccuracies. (Example: cohp'ers visiting Bryson Mtn (Claiborne county) noted that summit (3200') had been reduced by stripmining. Neither the 30m or 10m DEM data revealed this, but the SRTM data did (3117'), see map or use the track elevation profile on the cohp google map.) I am now using the seamless server for the source of elevation data. Also Google Earth seems to have fairly accurate elevation data (10m DEM or 30m SRTM?), and we have a coarse (30m SRTM) elevation profile tool on our Google high points map along with 10m (and in some cases 3m LiDAR) spot elevations.

The highest point in TN is Clingmans Dome at 6,643', and the lowest point is 188' along the Mississippi. (Elevation profile from Memphis to Clingman's Dome.) The Tennessee county high points have one "twofer", a single high point that serves two counties: Marion and Sequatchie at Lockhart. Anderson and Campbell county mostly share a high point, though the Cross Mountain benchmark (high point) is in Campbell county. The 2015 TN LiDAR elevation survey has Cross Mountain high point (3534.2') at 36.198266,-84.230993. Here is a nice article from the Tennessee Conservationist magazine on Tennessee's high points (1999).

Sevier county has the maximum elevation differential -- Clingmans Dome (6643') to the French Broad River (839'). Lake County has least relief (82'). The following table lists the relief for a few counties. The low points have not been located with the greatest rigor. County low points usually occur at a river or creek drainage on the county border. Rhea County low point is in a quarry at 35.538287,-84.898657. You can view the low point by pasting the lat,lon into the Find box of the Google map.

• TN "digital" high points (purple pin) on ★ Google map/image ★
• use Google Earth to view TN high points with this KML file, cohp.kml
• ESRI TN county high points map or leafletjs map
• cohp's Tennessee county high points trip reports
• Tennessee Conservationist magazine on Tennessee's high points (1999) and regional high points
  • highest Clingman's Dome (eastern mountains)
  • Valley and ridge: English Mountain
  • Cumberland Plateau: Cross Mountain
  • Central Basin: Mount Defiance ?
  • Highland Rim: Short Mountain state natural area
  • Western: Sand Mountain
• cohp and their pin-point map and forum
• Andy Martin's county high point book and an interview
• peakbagger.com TN county highpoint list/map prominence
• listsofjohn TN county peaks
• Chuck Sutherland TN county high and low points
• Tennessee state parks high points
• ongoing GPS elevation survey of Smoky Mountain peaks, LiDAR
• Tennessee elevation map
      construct a state elevation cross-section with the track tool on the google map
      draw a line from west to east then plot the profile
• USGS topo info and DEM info and fact sheet
• USGS NED 3D elevation program or elevation server
• USGS DEM data download (quad-UTM based, 1925-1999) mostly 10m, NAD27 or NAD83, NGVD 29

  Elevation accuracy

  Media	Accuracy
  topo contours	1/2 contour
  spot elevation	1/3 contour
  benchmark	0.02 m
  ASTER	11 m
  SRTM	10 m
  DEM	7 m
  NED	2.4 m
  LiDAR	0.15 m
  photogrammetry	0.09 m
  EDM	0.03 m
  GPS/RTK	0.012 m

• USGS seamless server 10m, 30m, LiDAR (3m) -- NAD83 NAVD 88
• example of 10m DEM data (keenburg) for Sullivan county high point
• using 10m DEM to fill in the space between the contours, Google map examples: Mt Sequoyah, Big Cataloochee, Chiltoes, Tricorner Knob, Fissure (Compare with latest LiDAR data from NCGS via Peter Barr: partial Mt Sequoyah, Chiltoes, bogus Big Cataloochee and revised (6/2/09) Big Cataloochee.) Learn more about the processing errors of the Big Cataloochee LiDAR data -- a phantom peak!
• LiDAR
  • new elevation data LiDAR USGS CLICK site, or SRTM (2000) NED vs SRTM bare-earth vs first-return
  • NCGS LiDAR paper and NC flooplain LiDAR mapping
  • analysis of LiDAR elevation data NC, LiDAR vs SRTM vs GTOPO30 using NGS benchmarks
  • LiDAR mapping
  • statewide LiDAR acquisition WV NC OH and some LiDAR data: AL FL TN TX ND MO LA WY IA OR MD PA NJ MS MO GA MI SC VA MD DE NJ VT KY CA WA OR OK SD WI KS NE CO IL IN MN
  • national LiDAR dataset state surveys
  • Ohio county high points LiDAR analysis and a few PA counties
  • LiDAR/3m DEM digital county high points for West Virginia and Ohio and North Carolina
  • LiDAR analsyis (USGS 3m DEM) of county high points for Aransas county a Texas coastal county, or Florida state high point
  • to see US LiDAR coverage, enable the "Elevation Availability" layer in the national map viewer and enable the NED 3m box
  • various LiDAR airborne 1 projects
• Smokies GSMNP GPS elevation survey and LiDAR
• Tennessee LiDAR
  • 2014-2018 TN Elevation/LiDAR survey maps DEMs, business plan and technical specs (18 cm veritcal RMSE)
  • 2013-16 surveys (24.5 cm vertical accuracy) Van Buren/Sequatchie (OSM), Lower Cumberland (FEMA), coming Scott county
    • Van Buren county LiDAR high point, 2141.98'
    • Sequatchie LiDAR: east LiDAR 2379.75', central 2386.95' (close to 10m DEM 2394'), west 2386.92' (close to county line)
• Photogrammetry Versus Lidar or here
• elevation accuracy highway study -- GPS/RTK, LiDAR, photogrammetry, electronic distance measurement (EDM)
• RTK vs LiDAR
• GoogleEarth has good elevation data and you can add topo overlay
• GTOPO30 global digital elevation model (DEM) with a horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 kilometer).
• coming soon new ASTER elevation data (30 m) 11m vertical accuracy (bare-earth) and paper
• Tennessee lookout towers or Tennessee county maps and topos by county
• Tennessee Topography, bulletin #86, David Starnes, 2009
• History of County Formations in Tennessee 1776-1985
• Tennessee county landforms
• more on TN peaks and Tennessee's mountains with prominence of 1000 feet or greater (Google map).
• TN cities by elevation
• GPS vertical accuracy and WAAS accuracy or elevation accuracy and humor and accuracy of benchmarks, spot elevations, contours
• altimeter accuracy and barometric altimeter vs GPS altitude
• SRTM elevation data 30m 90m and here
• NED elevation query, broken? USGS elevation query url construction and parameters WGS84/NAVD 88
• gpsvisualizer.com elevation services 30m SRTM/NED
• Tennessee elevation profile Memphis to Clingman's Dome
• heywhatsthat.com elevation profiles 30m SRTM
• elevations and climbing analysis DEM vs GPS
• GPS x-y and elevation wander on Gregory Bald and Mt Cammerer
• county line GIS data
• tiff images of USGS quadrangles by state
• public land survey system PLSS (Township/Range/Section, e.g. T25R3W section 31 or 16-30N-23W) and a converter to/from lat/lon or here or here -- back 40, square mile sections
• state plane coordinates conversion spcs83
• NGS datasheets benchmarks by lat/lon, county, quad and their accuracy terms SCALED ADJUSTED
• background info on benchmarks
• NGS CORS (58 in TN) and map or GPS on benchmarks (158 in TN) TN GPS benchmarks
• vertical datums NGVD 29 and NAVD 88 and VERTCON and converter
• NGS survey marker and survey marker accuracy terms
• NED vertical accuracy
• NED vs NGS benchmark analysis by state
• survey monuments and benchmarks summit benchmarks
• NC county high points
• US state high points on google map and ushp.gpx and ushp.kml and highpointers.org and photo gallery
• National Parks high points
• US state parks high points
• big Tennessee sinkholes and county sinkholes
• Google map of US state big holes (sinkhole, crater, basin) US lowpoint guide flattest states
• anti-prominence sinkholes, basins greater than 300', US map
• USGS elevations and distances
• Yahoo prominence group and subsidence and prominence theory and prominence wiki
• Tennessee's remotest point
• US higest city by state
• TN degrees of confluence 12
• TN real estate assessment property owners
• more GPS info

For reference, here are Andy's original TN county high point areas, courtesy of Tom Owen, and on Google map (includes new additions in Shelby and Lake County), and tnahps.gpx and tnahps.kmz. Andy has a demo Google map for various US county high points, includes gpx and kml data and link to trip reports, derived from Adam's cohp.org, another version of US county high points google map, or leafletjs version. Also, see US county high points ESRI map (too big for my free account), or US ArcGIS map

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visits since 12/10/04    Tom Dunigan -- revised Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:13:51 -0700