— — a town that holds to the side of a mountain.
“A copper town pinned to a thirty-degree slope, two hours north of Phoenix. Brick and clapboard buildings step down Cleopatra Hill in switchbacks, held in place by stone retaining walls and stubbornness. The streets are short, the corners are tight, and the view from any porch is the long green run of the Verde Valley below. — from the studio
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.
Jerome sits on the northeast flank of Cleopatra Hill in Yavapai County, perched between 5,000 and 5,500 feet on grades steep enough that one building, the old jail, slid 225 feet downhill after dynamite blasts in the 1920s. Founded in 1876 around copper claims that became the United Verde Mine, the town hit roughly 15,000 residents in the late 1920s, then emptied when the mine closed in 1953. The remaining settlement, fewer than 500 people today, was named a National Historic Landmark in 1967.
The buildings are mostly brick, adobe, and rough-cut stone, with iron-railed balconies and steep wooden stairs filling the gaps between switchbacks. Main Street and Hull Avenue terrace down the hillside in three tiers, connected by alleys cut into the slope. The 1898 Mingus Union school, the 1917 Bartlett Hotel ruin, and the 1899 Connor Hotel still anchor the upper grid. Retaining walls of locally quarried stone hold the whole town to the mountain.
Jerome is reached by State Route 89A, a switchbacked two-lane that climbs from Cottonwood in the Verde Valley and crosses Mingus Mountain toward Prescott. Most of the historic core is walkable in an afternoon, though the grade is real and the sidewalks are narrow. The Jerome State Historic Park, set in the 1916 Douglas Mansion above the open pit, opens daily and frames the town and the mine in one view.