Apache Trail
— the road the dam built, slowly going back to dust.
Not only on a wall.
“Forty miles of switchback dirt and asphalt that climbs out of Apache Junction, past saguaro and red rock, threading Canyon Lake and the one-street stop at Tortilla Flat before dropping toward Roosevelt. The 2019 floods took out the upper stretch and most of it is still closed past Fish Creek Hill. What's open is enough. A century-old freight road that the desert is patiently reclaiming.
Apache Trail, 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.
State Route 88 between Apache Junction and Roosevelt Dam, about 40 miles of road through the Superstition Wilderness in central Arizona. Built between 1903 and 1905 to haul materials for Theodore Roosevelt Dam, which was at the time the tallest masonry dam in the world. The route climbs from desert scrub at roughly 1,700 feet through Goldfield, Canyon Lake, and Tortilla Flat before reaching the dam on the Salt River. The Tonto National Forest manages the corridor, which Theodore Roosevelt himself called one of the most spectacular roads he had ever seen.
The Superstition Mountains the road threads are the eroded remains of a volcanic caldera that collapsed roughly 18 million years ago. The cliffs are welded tuff, ash compacted under its own heat into rock that holds vertical faces and weathers into hoodoos and standing pillars. Fish Creek Hill, the steepest descent on the route, drops about 1,500 feet through this layered rhyolite in a series of one-lane switchbacks. The rock reads orange and red in low sun, ash-grey at noon, and chalk-pink in the hour before a summer thunderstorm.
The lower segment from Apache Junction to Tortilla Flat is paved and open in every season. Past Tortilla Flat the road becomes dirt, and the upper section from the Fish Creek Hill overlook to Roosevelt Dam has been closed since heavy 2019 storms damaged the roadbed. Arizona Department of Transportation has not committed to a reopening date. Until then the route from the Roosevelt side is also closed at Reavis Trailhead. The accessible portion still includes Canyon Lake, Tortilla Flat, and the Fish Creek Hill overlook itself.