Sky Island Scenic Byway Mt Lemmon
— — a road that climbs through four seasons in a morning.
Not only on a wall.
“The Catalina Highway leaves Tucson in the saguaro and ends, twenty-seven miles later, in pine forest above nine thousand feet. The climb passes through five life zones: desert, grassland, oak woodland, ponderosa, and a small island of fir and aspen near the summit. Summerhaven sits a few miles below the top with a cookie shop and a few cabins. The view back down catches half of southern Arizona.
Sky Island Scenic Byway Mt Lemmon, 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.
The Sky Island Scenic Byway, officially the Catalina Highway, climbs roughly twenty-seven miles from the Tucson basin to the summit area of Mount Lemmon at 9,157 feet. The road was carved between 1933 and 1950, largely by inmate labour from a federal honour camp on the mountain. The Santa Catalina range is the most northern of southern Arizona's Sky Islands, isolated forested ridges that rise out of the surrounding desert. The route runs through Coronado National Forest and the Pusch Ridge Wilderness on its way up.
Air temperature drops roughly thirty degrees Fahrenheit between the desert floor and the summit, the same change a driver would meet travelling from Tucson to southern Canada. The climb passes through five recognised life zones: Lower Sonoran, Upper Sonoran, Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian. Saguaro and palo verde give way to oak and pine, then to a stand of Douglas fir and quaking aspen near Marshall Gulch. In summer the road is one of the few places in the state where cool air is reliably found.
The byway is open in every season, though winter storms can close upper sections without notice. There is no toll to drive it; the Coronado Recreation Pass covers most pull-offs and trailheads. Summerhaven, the small village at the top, holds the Mount Lemmon Cookie Cabin, a general store, and a handful of cabins, many rebuilt after the 2003 Aspen Fire burned much of the area. Mount Lemmon Ski Valley above the village is the southernmost ski area in the contiguous United States, when the snow cooperates.