Havasu Falls
— — a turquoise that does not belong to a desert.
Not only on a wall.
“A hundred-foot waterfall pouring off red travertine into a pool the colour of a tropical sea, on the Havasupai Reservation in a side branch of the Grand Canyon. The blue comes from calcium carbonate dissolved out of the limestone uphill and dropped again as the water aerates over the lip. Reaching it is ten miles down from Hualapai Hilltop, through Supai village, on a permit the tribe releases once a year and that sells out within hours. Nothing else on the Colorado Plateau looks like this. From the studio.
Havasu Falls, 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.
Havasu Falls drops about 100 feet off a travertine lip on Havasu Creek, two miles below the village of Supai on the Havasupai Indian Reservation in Coconino County, Arizona. The reservation sits inside a side branch of the Grand Canyon and is one of the most remote permanently inhabited communities in the lower 48 states; mail still arrives by mule. The creek runs year-round from Havasu Spring above the village, fed by groundwater from the Coconino Plateau. The reservation is sovereign Havasupai land and is not part of Grand Canyon National Park.
The colour is real and chemical. Havasu Creek runs through limestone above the falls and picks up large amounts of dissolved calcium carbonate. Where the water aerates and warms over the lip, that carbonate drops out of solution as travertine — the same pale rock that builds the curtains and dams below the falls. The remaining suspended fines scatter sunlight in the short blue and green wavelengths, the way Caribbean shallows do, so the pool reads turquoise rather than glacial grey. A single major flood can reroute the falls overnight, as happened in August 2008.
Access is by permit only, issued by the Havasupai Tribe, and required for every overnight visitor; day hiking is not allowed. The route is roughly ten miles from Hualapai Hilltop down to the campground below the falls, with no water until Supai village at mile eight. Summer afternoons at 3,100 feet cross 100°F regularly, and the tribe closed the canyon to visitors for several years after the COVID pandemic before reopening in 2023. Permits release once a year through havasupaireservations.com and typically sell out the day they open.