Red Rock Crossing
— — the rock the creek learned to mirror.
Not only on a wall.
“The crossing where Oak Creek bends under Cathedral Rock, a stone's throw from the Crescent Moon Picnic Site. The water runs shallow here over a flat sandstone shelf, and on a still afternoon the spires double in the surface as cleanly as anywhere in Sedona. Photographers have been making the same frame since the territorial postcard era. The reflection is the whole reason the place has a name.
Red Rock Crossing, 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.
Red Rock Crossing sits on Oak Creek at the foot of Cathedral Rock, inside the Crescent Moon Recreation Area on the Coconino National Forest about three miles southwest of Sedona, Arizona. The crossing is a broad shelf of Schnebly Hill sandstone where the creek runs shallow and wide. Elevation is roughly 4,000 feet. Access is via Red Rock Crossing Road off Upper Red Rock Loop, and a Red Rock Pass or America the Beautiful pass is required to park. The site is day-use, gated at dusk, and known on view-of-Cathedral-Rock surveys as one of the most photographed scenes in the American Southwest.
Oak Creek rises in Oak Creek Canyon north of Sedona and runs about 50 miles south to its confluence with the Verde River near Cornville. At the crossing the bed widens to a flat sandstone slab a few inches deep in low water, which is why the reflection of Cathedral Rock reads so cleanly in photographs. The creek runs year-round, fed by springs in the canyon, and is one of the few perennial streams in Arizona's red rock country. Spring snowmelt and summer monsoon storms can lift the water two feet inside an afternoon.
The trail from the Crescent Moon parking area to the creek bank is about a quarter mile, mostly flat, and stroller-friendly to the picnic ramadas. A Red Rock Pass is required (daily or weekly) and is sold at the entrance kiosk and at vendors in Sedona. The light most photographers come for is late afternoon, when Cathedral Rock catches the warm side and the reflection holds. Wading is allowed in summer; swimming is not at this stretch. The gate closes at sunset and is enforced.