Amarillo
— flat sky, sideways wind, ten Cadillacs in a row.
Not only on a wall.
“A Panhandle city on the old Route 66, at about 3,600 feet on the southern High Plains. Cadillac Ranch sits in a fallow field west of town, ten cars nose-down in the dirt at the same angle as the Great Pyramid, repainted by visitors every week since 1974. The wind here moves across a sky so flat it reads as a second floor.
Amarillo, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Amarillo sits at about 1,100 metres in the Texas Panhandle, on the southern High Plains, roughly midway between Albuquerque and Oklahoma City along the line of old Route 66. The city was founded in 1887 as a railhead and grew on cattle, helium, and oilfield service work; it remains the largest population centre in the Panhandle, with around 200,000 residents. Palo Duro Canyon, the second-largest canyon in the country, opens 30 kilometres south of town, and the XIT Ranch country runs north toward the Oklahoma border.
The Panhandle sky is the city's defining feature. Amarillo sits on flat, treeless plains at the western edge of the Llano Estacado, where the horizon runs unbroken for tens of kilometres and the wind averages around 22 km/h, among the windiest in the lower 48. Summer thunderstorms build vertically and can be tracked for hours across the plain. The Panhandle is part of Tornado Alley; National Weather Service Amarillo issues watches across a 19-county area each spring.
Cadillac Ranch sits in a fallow field on the south side of I-40 west of town, ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 buried nose-down at the same angle as the Great Pyramid. Installed in 1974 by the Ant Farm collective for rancher Stanley Marsh 3, the cars are repainted constantly by visitors. The Big Texan Steak Ranch on I-40 east offers a free 72-ounce steak to anyone who finishes it in an hour. Palo Duro Canyon State Park, 30 kilometres south, holds the second-largest canyon in the country.