Its highest summit is Holston High Point, on which a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aircraft navigational beacon is located, at an elevation of 4,280 feet (1,300 m) above mean sea level.

Located near the Cherokee National Forest boundary and to the left of Panhandle Road is a parking area and foot trail that leads down the slope to the Blue Hole Falls (approximately 45 feet (14 m) high).

No matter, though.. the last three miles (4.8 km) of Panhandle Road along the top of the ridge are filled with washouts, steep drop-offs, and no turnarounds.

George R. Stewart, describing this placename history, notes, "Thus one of the largest streams of that region came to bear the name of a common settler".

[2] September 1, 2007 The FAA says five Jehovah's Witnesses ministers from East Tennessee were killed when their small plane crashed in the Cherokee National Forest on Holston Mountain shortly after takeoff.

A passing airplane spotted the smoldering wreckage around 7:00 p.m. Saturday about a mile and a half down the southern side of the mountain, from the Holston High Point broadcasting antenna farm.

Early broadcasters in the 1950s and 1960s quickly realized Holston Mountain as a prime radio-television transmission location because it is the highest visible point that faces most of the major cities in Upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia in the surrounding valley between Knoxville, Tennessee, to southwest of Roanoke, Virginia.

The television towers for WJHL, digital Channel 11, Johnson City, Tennessee, and WKPT, digital Channel 19, Kingsport, Tennessee, are standing side by side in a common broadcasting antenna farm on the southwest slope of Holston High Point, one mile (1.6 km) southwest of Rye Patch Knob.

The transmitter for WEMT, digital Channel 39, licensed to Greeneville, Tennessee was relocated from Camp Creek Bald (Viking Mountain) south of Greeneville to the WCYB digital tower on Rye Patch Knob, when ownership of WEMT was acquired by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, owners of WCYB.

Located further down the southwestern slope, off of Holston Mountain Road, is the transmitting site of FM Class C3 WEXX 99.3, Elizabethton, Tennessee.

Various U.S. federal, Tennessee state, Sullivan, Washington and Carter County governmental agencies, along with utility microwave relay stations, also transmit base-to-mobile communications from the Holston High Point antenna farm and Rye Patch Knob.