House Mountain

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House Mountain is a mountain near Mascot and Corryton, Tennessee. It is located at 36°06′42″N, 83°46′00″W^GR1, about 15 miles northeast of Knoxville, Tennessee and is the highest point in Knox County. With its 2,064 foot peak, it was designated the House Mountain State Natural Area in 1987. The mountain is known for huge sandstone boulders and a wide variety of bird and plant life. House Mountain rises from a large plain in eastern Knox County, about 3 miles southwest of the southern terminus of Clinch Mountain. The Unaka Range, which includes the Great Smoky Mountains to the southwest, and the Bald Mountains to the northeast, is visible across the southern horizon from the southern slope on clear days the Cumberland, Powell, and Clinch mountains are visible across the northern horizon.

[edit] Broadcasting history

Located about a half mile east of House Mountain on much smaller Zachary Ridge, is a 1,751 foot tall broadcasting tower, formerly owned and used by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, Knoxville, Tennessee. Old-time broadcast engineers say that the reason the tall tower was built, was because the former owners of WBIR were unable to purchase private property atop House Mountain to build a new, much shorter tower for their antenna, at a time back in the early 1960's when the station owners wanted to greatly expand that station's broadcast coverage area. If a WBIR tower had been built atop House Mountain, from the top of the new broadcasting antenna to the tower base on the mountain, the tower would have only needed to be about 600 to 700 feet tall to reach the 1,800 feet allowable tower height the FCC had already approved for the station.

At that point John Reece, the late former TV program director at WATE-TV, Channel 6, Knoxville, continues the "historical perspective" on the situation. He gave that in an interview for that station's "PM Magazine" program in 1983.

Anticipating a WBIR House Mountain tower and its huge broadcasting coverage area from there, Mr. Reece said, the then-owners of WATE-TV, quickly went in and purchased the only property for sale that could be used as a tower base on the mountain. The WATE owners then convinced their new neighbors, the adjoining private property owners there, to NOT sell their mountaintop property to anybody else, for aesthetic reasons. That move prevented any land purchase atop House Mountain by the station's main competitor WBIR. That action forced WBIR to spend millions more dollars to build a taller tower for its broadcasting antenna in the surrounding valley below. The resulting 1,751 foot tower, now owned by South Central Communications and used by its WIMZ-FM103.5, was and still is, the tallest man-made structure in the state of Tennessee. After the tall tower was built, Mr. Reece said WATE then sold its newly acquired House Mountain property to a private owner.