Courthouse Butte
— — the bench the desert pulled up to the fire.
Not only on a wall.
“A broad sandstone mass standing south of Sedona, across the highway from Bell Rock. Locals call the pair brother and sister. The colour is Schnebly Hill red, slow and warm, the kind that holds light for a long minute after the sun has gone. The loop trail circles the base in about four miles, mostly flat, mostly quiet on a weekday morning. The juniper smells like rain even when it hasn't rained. from the studio
Courthouse Butte, 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.
Courthouse Butte rises about 5,544 feet above sea level in the Coconino National Forest, on the south edge of the Village of Oak Creek and just across State Route 179 from its smaller neighbour, Bell Rock. The butte is composed of Permian-age sandstones — primarily the Schnebly Hill Formation, capped by the Coconino Sandstone — the same layered red rock that shapes nearby Cathedral Rock and Bell Rock. A roughly four-mile loop trail circles the base from the Bell Rock Vista trailhead, managed by the Red Rock Ranger District.
The red is iron oxide bound into ancient dune sand. The Schnebly Hill Formation laid down about 280 million years ago in a coastal-dune setting, the cross-bedding still visible in the cliffs as long diagonal lines. Above it sits the paler Coconino Sandstone, a frosted-quartz wind deposit from the same Permian period. Where the two meet, the butte holds two distinct bands of colour, and the joint weathers into the rounded shoulders that give Courthouse its bench-like profile from the highway.
Sedona's red rocks burn warmest in the last half hour before sunset, when low light strikes the iron-rich sandstone and the cliff face reads almost orange. Courthouse faces roughly west and catches the full of it. The Red Rock Pass parking system applies at Bell Rock Vista, the closest trailhead, with day passes sold by the Coconino National Forest. Winter mornings can hold frost in the shadow of the butte well past nine; summer afternoons bring brief monsoon storms in July and August.