Fentress County High Point Trip Report
Date: August 2001
Author: Ken Oeser
From Clarkrange at the intersection of Highways 62 and 127, go west on Highway 62 for about 6 miles to
the Putnam county line. From here we drove about 0.5 mile to the BM1870 spot. An old lady remembered
seeing the BM, but didn't know where or when. It immediately began pouring rain, so we walked around
looking up and down the highway, especially across from the house at the high area as shown on the topo,
but couldn't find it. We sighted with the telescope level from here to the 2 small areas southwest and
deemed them much lower, along with the small area northwest and most of the ridge area contour in sight.
Highway 62 sighted higher about 0.7 miles NE where it tops a hill. Sighting from a market halfway between
confirmed this.
From the top of the hill, we continued NE a short distance and drove north up to a large new house at a high area.
The owner asked how we got to his house and we told him we drove through the open gate.
He guessed a point in his field just west of the house and gave permission for us to walk there, although he
asked a couple of times why we were wanting to find the highpoint of the county. We pulled out the
telescope level and sighted north, northeast, and southeast, eliminating all those areas, and finding the spot
100 yards west to be the only area higher than the house. We went through a gate and all walked to the
highpoint. Since this area is higher than the road crest, which is higher than BM1870 spot, this must be
close to 1880 feet! Sighting to the county liners 1 mile west was into the trees, so these are probably lower
since they are not on the ridge crest.
We drove over to the liners on Union B Road and Low Gap Road, which ended at a dirt road just north of
the NE-most and largest liner. We walked south on this road to a soybean field, then skirted the edge to the
high area at the fields edge. Sighting from here to the SW looked like the other liners were lower, so we
didn't bother with them.
The nest day we visited the 3 areas east of Cooktown (you call this a town? There's not even a house here!)
via a gravel road (Manson Road), then turned onto a dirt road for the last 0.3 mile. Here we parked and
hiked ATV trails to the 3 spots. The two small ones have less than 3 feet of gain, while the largest one has
about 6 feet of gain, so these don't qualify even to BM1870. If they did, there would be one large contour.
As it is, there just isn't enough gain. If anyone wants a road log to these from Twinton on Highway 85, I
can give it to them. The farm with what we deem the highest point in the county is for sale; I think it is on
800-900 acres. This large contour is about 2.5 miles long, with lots of bumps along its ridge.