Phoenix Camelback Mountain skyline
— — the shape the whole city orients to.
Not only on a wall.
“A sandstone-and-granite ridge that rises 2,704 feet over the Phoenix valley floor in the long unmistakable shape of a kneeling camel. Echo Canyon and Cholla are the two trails that climb it; the rest of the city looks at it. From any window facing north out of Arcadia, from any patio in Paradise Valley, the mountain is the thing that fixes where you are. Late afternoons turn the head of the camel a deep red against the sky. — from the studio
Phoenix Camelback Mountain skyline, 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.
Camelback Mountain is a 2,704-foot sandstone-and-granite ridge that rises near the geographic centre of the Phoenix metropolitan area in Maricopa County, Arizona. The summit sits between the Town of Paradise Valley and the Arcadia neighbourhood of Phoenix. The mountain takes its name from its silhouette: a Precambrian granite "head" on the west end and a younger sedimentary "hump" of red Camels Head Formation sandstone on the east. The summit and most of the mountain are protected as a City of Phoenix park, with the original Echo Canyon parcel set aside in 1968.
The mountain is the visual anchor of the Phoenix skyline in a way few American cities have. From downtown, from Tempe, from any north-facing window in Arcadia, Camelback fixes the compass. Sunset is the working hour: low light off the western desert turns the red sandstone of the "hump" a deeper red and throws the granite head into hard backlit silhouette. The city kept the surrounding terrain low through a 1968 height-limit ordinance so the mountain would stay readable from the valley floor, and that decision is part of why the view still works.
Two trails reach the summit, both classed strenuous by the City of Phoenix. The Echo Canyon Trail on the north side is 1.2 miles one-way and gains 1,264 feet, with railings and pinned sections through the steepest pitches. The Cholla Trail on the south side is 1.4 miles and a longer, more exposed ridge walk. Summer hiking is restricted by city order when the National Weather Service forecast hits an Excessive Heat Warning; the safe window is October through April, with early-morning starts the rest of the year.