Bell Rock
— — a bell of stone the desert keeps ringing.
Not only on a wall.
“South of Sedona, where Highway 179 climbs out of the Village of Oak Creek, Bell Rock rises in tiers of Schnebly Hill sandstone the colour of rust and dried apricot. From the trailhead it looks like a single dome; from the saddle behind Courthouse Butte it resolves into stacked ledges, each one a different chapter of the Permian. The light reads warmest about an hour before sunset.
Bell Rock, 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.
Bell Rock sits in the Coconino National Forest just south of the Village of Oak Creek, about six miles south of Sedona along State Route 179. The summit rises to roughly 4,919 feet, with about 400 feet of relief above the surrounding desert floor. The rock is part of the Sedona red rock formation drained by Oak Creek, and is reached from the Bell Rock Pathway and Courthouse Butte loop trailheads operated by the Red Rock Ranger District of the Coconino National Forest.
The red layers are Schnebly Hill Formation sandstone, laid down in the Permian roughly 280 million years ago as coastal dune fields on the western edge of Pangaea. The colour comes from iron oxide cementing the quartz grains. Above the red sits the lighter Coconino Sandstone, deposited as inland dunes a few million years later. Erosion by Oak Creek and its tributaries cut the buttes free from the surrounding plateau over the last six million years, leaving Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte as remnants.
Bell Rock is reached from two main trailheads on State Route 179 — Bell Rock Vista to the north and Courthouse Vista to the south. Both require a Red Rock Pass or Interagency Pass on the dashboard. The main loop around the base is about 3.6 miles on easy desert tread; the scramble routes up the lower tiers are unmaintained and exposed. Summer afternoons climb above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so most hikers go early in the morning or in the cooler half of the year.