Zumwalt Meadow Kings Canyon
— — a meadow the road just barely reaches.
Not only on a wall.
“A loop of wet meadow on the floor of Kings Canyon, at the upper end of California Highway 180 east of Cedar Grove. Granite walls hold the meadow on both sides: North Dome rising sharply on the north, Grand Sentinel facing it from the south. The South Fork Kings River runs the length of the meadow, slow and clear, past stands of willow and the corn lily that turns the field pale gold in September. The highway closes east of Hume Lake from November through April most years, so the meadow goes quiet for nearly half the year. It is named for Daniel K. Zumwalt, the Southern Pacific attorney whose lobbying in the early 1890s helped set aside the giant sequoias of General Grant Grove for federal protection.
Zumwalt Meadow Kings 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.
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.
Zumwalt Meadow lies on the floor of Kings Canyon in Kings Canyon National Park, in Fresno County, California, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. The meadow sits at about five thousand feet of elevation, on the South Fork of the Kings River, four and a half miles east of the Cedar Grove area and a mile west of the Roads End trailhead at the upper terminus of California Highway 180. The granite walls above the meadow are North Dome on the north side and Grand Sentinel on the south, each rising more than three thousand feet above the river. The meadow is named for Daniel K. Zumwalt, an attorney for the Southern Pacific Railroad whose lobbying helped establish General Grant National Park in 1890.
Highway 180, the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway, closes east of Hume Lake from early November through late April most years, leaving the upper canyon, including Cedar Grove, Zumwalt Meadow, and Roads End, accessible only on foot or by ski over the winter months. The canyon itself was carved into Sierran granite by glacial action over the last two million years and is, by some measures, the deepest canyon in the contiguous United States, with relief from Spanish Mountain to the river floor of more than eight thousand feet. The meadow lies in the bottom of that cut, more than a mile below the surrounding ridges. The river at this elevation is the dominant sound; on a still afternoon, the meadow holds the running water and very little else.
The road into Zumwalt Meadow is open from late April or early May, depending on snowpack, through the first heavy storm in November. The meadow itself is greenest in June and early July, after the South Fork's spring flood has dropped but before the summer dries the sedges. In mid- to late August the corn lily, Veratrum californicum, begins to yellow and the meadow turns gold for a few weeks in September. The loop trail was damaged by the 2017 atmospheric river floods that washed out long sections of the canyon road and the boardwalk; the National Park Service has rebuilt the trail in phases since, and the current loop runs about 1.5 miles. Black bears use the meadow at dusk and dawn, and food storage in the parking lot is enforced.