Mt Lemmon summit
— — Canada at the end of a desert drive.
Not only on a wall.
“The Catalina Highway climbs from saguaro and ocotillo to ponderosa and aspen in about an hour. At the top, near 9,000 feet, the air smells of pine and the temperature has dropped almost thirty degrees from Tucson. Summerhaven sits in a small bowl near the summit, rebuilt after the 2003 Aspen Fire. The ski lift on the south side is the southernmost in the United States. The Sky Island Scenic Byway is the road that gets you here.
Mt Lemmon summit, 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.
Mount Lemmon is the high point of the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, rising to 9,159 feet (2,792 m) in the Coronado National Forest. The mountain takes its name from Sara Plummer Lemmon, a botanist who reached the summit by mule in 1881. The Catalina Highway, also called the Sky Island Scenic Byway, climbs roughly 25 miles from the desert floor to the village of Summerhaven near the top, gaining about 6,500 feet. The road was carved largely by federal prison labor between 1933 and 1951 and was paved through into the 1950s.
The drive up is a vertical transect through four biological zones, from Sonoran desert to mixed-conifer forest. Temperatures at the summit run twenty to thirty degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Tucson on a summer afternoon, which is the working reason Tucsonans drive up. Aspens turn yellow on the upper slopes in October. The Mount Lemmon SkyCenter operates a public-observing program at the summit at 9,157 feet, using the dark sky that the elevation and the desert air give it.
The Catalina Highway begins on the east side of Tucson and ends in Summerhaven; a Coronado Recreation Pass is required for stopping at most upper trailheads and viewpoints. Mount Lemmon Ski Valley operates the southernmost ski lift in the continental United States; in summer the lift runs as a scenic chair to about 9,100 feet. The 2003 Aspen Fire burned much of Summerhaven, and the rebuilt village holds the Cookie Cabin and a small general store. Snow can close upper segments of the highway in winter.