Monument Valley Merrick Butte
— — the red the late sun pulls out of the stone.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the three central buttes on the Monument Valley loop, sitting south across the wash from the Mittens. The formation carries the name of James Merrick, a prospector killed near here in 1880 while searching for silver with Ernest Mitchell. The sandstone reads pale at noon and a deeper red after four. The shadow lengthens east as the afternoon moves on, and the loop road empties out an hour before sunset.
Monument Valley Merrick 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.
Merrick Butte stands on the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park loop in northern Arizona, just south of the Utah border. It rises roughly 1,000 feet above the valley floor, one of the three central sandstone buttes visible from the View Hotel overlook and the Wildcat Trail. The formation is named for James Merrick, a prospector killed in 1880 along with Ernest Mitchell while searching for silver. The park is operated by the Navajo Nation Department of Parks and Recreation, reached by a 17-mile loop road from U.S. Highway 163 at Oljato-Monument Valley.
The butte is De Chelly Sandstone resting on a slope of Organ Rock Shale, the same sequence that built the Mittens and Mitchell Butte. The dark cap weathers slower than the softer slopes beneath, which is why the silhouette holds its shape over geologic time. Iron oxide in the sandstone gives the valley its deep red. John Ford filmed Stagecoach in this part of the valley in 1939, and Goulding's Lodge two miles northwest still keeps the cabins from that production.
The valley reads differently every hour. Mid-morning leaves the east face flat and pale, but after four the western light pulls the red out of the stone and lengthens the shadow of Merrick toward the Mittens. The visitor overlook faces east, so sunrise lights the central buttes head-on. Photographers tend to favor the second half of the afternoon from the Wildcat Trail, the three-mile loop around West Mitten Butte. Winter sun stays low all day and the colour holds longer than in summer.