Coronado NM
— — the pass where the expedition crossed in 1540.
Not only on a wall.
“Coronado National Memorial sits at the southern tip of the Huachuca Mountains, where Arizona meets Sonora. Montezuma Pass climbs above the grasslands to roughly six thousand five hundred feet, with the San Pedro Valley spreading north and the Sierra Madre running south into Mexico. The memorial honours Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's 1540 entrada, the first European expedition to enter what is now the American Southwest.
Coronado NM, 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.
Coronado National Memorial covers about 4,750 acres at the southern end of the Huachuca Mountains, in Cochise County. The unit borders Mexico for roughly five miles and was established in 1952, transferred from the earlier Coronado International Memorial designation. The memorial commemorates the 1540 to 1542 expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, which entered the region through the San Pedro Valley north of present-day Naco. The site is managed by the National Park Service from a visitor centre at the base of Montezuma Canyon Road.
The visitor centre opens daily and entrance to the memorial is free. The road climbs about three miles to Montezuma Pass, where overlooks at roughly 6,575 feet take in the San Pedro Valley and the Sierra San José across the border. Coronado Cave, a limestone solution cavern, is reached by a half-mile uphill trail from the visitor centre, with a free self-issued permit. Coronado Peak rises a further 300 feet above the pass by a paved 0.4-mile path.
The memorial sits at the meeting of four ecoregions: Sonoran Desert, Chihuahuan Desert, Sierra Madrean pine-oak woodland, and Rocky Mountain conifer forest. The mix supports more than 140 recorded bird species, including the elegant trogon and a dozen hummingbird species drawn to the canyon corridor. Black bear, coatimundi, and mountain lion move through the canyons. The grasslands below the Huachucas are part of the larger Madrean Sky Islands, the northern reach of subtropical biodiversity from the Sierra Madre.