Colorado River below Hoover Dam
— — the cold green that comes out from under the dam.
Not only on a wall.
“The river below the dam is not the river above it. Water released from the depths of Lake Mead comes out near fifty degrees and a deep clear green. Black Canyon walls rise straight from it. Bighorn drink at the edges. Kayakers put in at the base and drift slow to Willow Beach, past hot springs that smell faintly of sulphur.
Colorado River below Hoover Dam, 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.
The stretch begins at the base of Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada line and runs roughly twelve miles south through Black Canyon to Willow Beach. The walls are volcanic rock, dark and vertical. Water is released from Lake Mead through penstocks roughly two hundred feet below the reservoir surface, which keeps it cold and clear year-round. The corridor sits inside Lake Mead National Recreation Area, administered by the National Park Service since 1964.
The water leaves the dam at around forty-five to fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit, far colder than the warm desert reservoir above it. The penstocks draw from deep in Lake Mead, well below the thermocline. That cold deep water carries little sediment, so the river runs a clear, dense green rather than the silty red the lower Colorado used to show before 1936. The cold tailwater supports a rainbow trout fishery that Arizona Game and Fish stocks at Willow Beach.
Access from the dam itself is closed to the public; put-ins are at Willow Beach Marina, twelve miles downstream, or by permit at the base of the dam through licensed outfitters. The float from the dam to Willow Beach takes about five hours by kayak. Arizona Hot Springs and Gold Strike Hot Springs sit along the canyon walls, reached by short scramble from the river. The corridor is open all year; summer water temperatures stay near fifty degrees.