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Clinch Mountain is a Mountain Ridge in the U.S. State s of Tennessee and Virginia , lying in the Ridge-and-valley section of the Appalachian Mountains . It runs in a general east-northeasterly direction from near Blaine, Tennessee to Garden Mountain near Burke's Garden, Virginia . It separates the Clinch River basin, to the north, and the Holston River basin, to the south. GEOGRAPHY Clinch Mountain is a long ridge, about in length. It runs generally southwest-northeast, with numerous curves. Its north-south extent is , and east-west . Due to its size it is sometimes called a mountain range or complex. According to peakbagger.com, Clinch Mountain Complex includes the sub-range of Knob Mountain, as well as four high point summits above 4,000 feet (Beartown Mountain, Flattop Mountain, Morris Knob, and Chimney Rock Peak). For its entire length, Clinch Mountain only has two true gaps during which the ridge is completely sliced in half and continues as Clinch Mountain on either side, divided by a creek. One of those is Moccasin Gap at Weber City, Virginia (the Norfolk-Southern Railway and U.S. Highways 23-58-421 utilize that crossing because there is no elevation in the division of the mountain). The second true gap in Clinch Mountain is Little Moccasin Gap, 30 miles northeast of Moccasin Gap, where U.S. Highway 58 Alternate crosses between Hansonville and Abingdon, Virginia. All other transportation crossings, as noted below, require an elevation climb to the top of the Clinch Mountain ridge. When U.S. Highway 25-E was realigned into a four-lane highway northwest of Bean Station, Tennessee in the 1980's, it was necessary to cut a new gap into the top of Clinch Mountain, which lowered the original gap elevation by 200 feet. That realignment, along with the lowering of Interstate 26-U.S. Highway 23 at Sams Gap on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, are the only instances of a highway gap in Tennessee actually lowering an original gap where a state or federal highway was built through. (Sams Gap was lowered by 150 feet to accommodate the new interstate highway). HISTORY Clinch Mountain is named after after the Clinch River, which was named after an unknown pioneer. The earliest known reference to the name is in the journal of Dr. Walker : "Clinch's River, from one Clinch a hunter" (Stewart, 1967:146). The Wilderness Road to the Cumberland Gap crossed Clinch Mountain at Moccasin Gap, which Moccasin Creek flows through to join the Holston River to the south. MUSIC The Carter Family immortalized the mountain in their 1928 song "My Clinch Mountain Home." A fiddle tune called "Clinch Mountain Backstep" is in the Appalachian folk repertoire. TRANSPORTATION CROSSINGS The following crossings of Clinch Mountain can be made, from southwest to northeast: ;Tennessee
;Virginia
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