Sabino Canyon
— — a desert creek that runs through saguaros.
Not only on a wall.
“A canyon on the south face of the Santa Catalina Mountains, just inside the Tucson city limits. Sabino Creek runs out of the high country and carries water most of the year, crossing the canyon road at nine stone bridges built by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s. Saguaros stand thick along the lower slopes; cottonwoods and sycamores hold the streambed. Private cars are not allowed past the visitor centre — an electric shuttle works the road in their place. In late summer the monsoon storms come over the ridge and the creek runs fast for a day, then settles back to itself. from the studio
Sabino Canyon, 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.
Sabino Canyon cuts into the southern face of the Santa Catalina Mountains on the northeast edge of Tucson, within the Coronado National Forest. The canyon floor sits around 2,700 feet, and the trails out of it climb to Mount Lemmon at 9,159 feet — the highest point in the Santa Catalinas. The canyon takes its name from Sabino Creek, a Sonoran Desert stream that drains roughly 35 square miles of high country and flows year-round in its upper reaches. The area was designated a recreation area in the 1970s and draws over 1.25 million visitors a year, making it one of the busiest sites in the national forest system in Arizona.
Sabino Creek is the reason the canyon looks the way it does. It runs across the canyon road at nine low stone bridges, built by Civilian Conservation Corps crews between 1933 and 1939 and still in original use. The lower reaches are perennial in most years and host Gila chub, longfin dace and lowland leopard frogs along with stands of Fremont cottonwood, Arizona sycamore and velvet ash that need the streamside water to survive in the desert. After summer monsoon storms — the rains that fall most years between July and mid-September — the creek can rise sharply within hours and the lower bridges are closed until the flood passes.
The canyon is open every day of the year, with a day-use fee per vehicle at the visitor centre lot. Private cars are not allowed past the lot; access up the canyon is by the Sabino Canyon Crawler, an electric shuttle that runs about 3.8 miles to the upper turnaround and stops at nine points along the way. A separate Bear Canyon tram serves the trailhead for Seven Falls. Trails range from a paved riverside walk to the Phoneline and Esperero routes that climb several thousand feet onto the Catalina backbone. Summer afternoons run above 100°F in the lower canyon; early mornings between November and April are the steadiest hiking conditions.