Submarine Rock
— — a hull of sandstone running aground in the junipers.
Not only on a wall.
“A long, low fin of red sandstone in the high desert south of Sedona, shaped like a submarine half-surfaced from a sea of juniper and pinyon. It sits inside the Coconino National Forest, reached by the Broken Arrow Trail out of Morgan Road. The pink-orange rock is part of the same Schnebly Hill Formation that built Bell Rock and Cathedral. Late afternoon is when the colour comes up; the jeep tours stop and the quiet returns.
Submarine Rock, 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.
Submarine Rock is a long sandstone formation in the red rock country south of Sedona, inside the Coconino National Forest. It is reached by the Broken Arrow Trail, a roughly three-mile out-and-back from the Morgan Road trailhead at the edge of town. The rock takes its name from the long, low silhouette read against the surrounding pinyon-juniper — a flat, ship-like deck of Schnebly Hill sandstone running for several hundred feet. The trail is shared with the Pink Jeep tour route, so foot traffic is steady on weekends.
The rock is part of the Schnebly Hill Formation, an early Permian sandstone laid down roughly 280 million years ago in a coastal dune field at the western edge of the supercontinent Pangea. The iron-oxide cement that colours Sedona's cliffs gives Submarine Rock its pink-to-orange surface; the same formation builds Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, and Courthouse Butte a few miles to the south. The flat upper deck is a single sandstone bed weathered out along bedding planes — geology doing the work of a sculptor.
A Red Rock Pass is required to park at the Morgan Road trailhead, currently five dollars per day from the Coconino National Forest. The Broken Arrow Trail climbs gently across slickrock for about a mile and a half before reaching the rock, with the spur to Chicken Point continuing past. There is no shade and no water; carry both, especially May through September when afternoon temperatures push past 95°F. Late afternoon, after the jeep tours have cleared, is when the colour and the silence both arrive.