Lost Coast
— the coast the highway let go.
Not only on a wall.
“Twenty-five miles of black-sand beach on California's far north coast, where the Pacific meets the King Range so steeply that Highway 1 couldn't be built and had to turn inland. The Lost Coast Trail runs from the Mattole River mouth south to Shelter Cove. Three sections are passable only at low tide; backpackers carry tide tables the way they carry water. Roosevelt elk wander down to the sand at dawn. The fog comes in by afternoon. Punta Gorda Lighthouse has been dark since 1951, its concrete shell still standing above a beach of seal haul-outs. Nobody hurries on this coast. The Pacific does what the Pacific does, and the road stays inland.
Lost Coast, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Lost Coast covers about twenty-five miles of California's North Coast in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, between the mouth of the Mattole River and Usal Beach. The King Range rises behind it, with King Peak reaching 4,088 feet within three miles of the Pacific, among the steepest coast-to-summit gradients in the contiguous United States. Federal protection began on October 21, 1970, when the Bureau of Land Management established the King Range National Conservation Area, the first NCA in the country. Sinkyone Wilderness State Park covers the southern portion, named for the Sinkyone band who lived along these creeks before contact. The name 'Lost Coast' dates to the 1930s, when California State Route 1 was routed inland through Leggett and the population on the coast collapsed.
The Lost Coast is the largest stretch of undeveloped coastline in the contiguous United States. There is no through-road, no cell signal across most of the King Range, and the only town along its length is Shelter Cove, with about seven hundred residents at the southern end. Between Shelter Cove and the Mattole trailhead, the sounds belong to the surf, the elk, and the wind running up the bluffs. Backpackers passing each other on the Lost Coast Trail tend to nod and keep walking. The Sinkyone, displaced from this coast in the mid-1800s, described a country thick with bear and elk. The bears have come back, in numbers.
The Lost Coast Trail runs about twenty-five miles from the Mattole River mouth south to Black Sands Beach at Shelter Cove. Three sections, totaling roughly four miles, are impassable at high tide and must be timed against a tide chart. Overnight travel in the King Range requires a BLM permit, booked through Recreation.gov, plus an approved bear-resistant food canister. Most backpackers take three to four days, hiking north to south to keep the prevailing wind at their back. The Mattole trailhead is reached by paved road from Petrolia; Shelter Cove by Briceland-Thorn Road from Garberville. There is no resupply along the trail. Punta Gorda Lighthouse, dark since 1951, sits at roughly mile six and makes a natural midday stop.