Chasm View Pulpit Rock Black Canyon NP Ceramic Art Tile
— — a chasm the sun barely reaches.
Not only on a wall.
“Pulpit Rock looks straight down into one of the narrowest, deepest canyons on the continent. The walls here are dark Precambrian schist and gneiss, nearly two billion years old, cut through by the Gunnison River. At this overlook the rim sits about 1,800 feet above the water. The river drops an average of 95 feet per mile through the park; in 48 miles it falls farther than the Mississippi does in 1,500. The sound carries up, faint, on a still afternoon. Most visitors stop only a minute or two.
Chasm View Pulpit Rock Black Canyon NP Ceramic Art Tile, 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.
Pulpit Rock Overlook sits on the South Rim of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, about 15 miles east of Montrose in western Colorado. The South Rim Drive runs roughly seven miles along the canyon edge, with twelve named overlooks between the visitor center and High Point. The Gunnison River carved the canyon over about two million years through some of the oldest exposed rock in North America. The park was designated a National Monument in 1933 by President Hoover and elevated to National Park status in 1999. At Pulpit Rock the canyon rim sits about 1,800 feet above the river, and the inner gorge here is narrower at the bottom than at the rim.
The walls of Black Canyon are Precambrian gneiss and schist, dated by the National Park Service to roughly 1.7 billion years old. Cutting through this dark rock are veins of lighter pink pegmatite, intruded later and visible across the canyon as pale streaks. The most dramatic example is the Painted Wall on the canyon's north side, which rises 2,250 feet from the river and is the tallest cliff in Colorado. The canyon's name comes from how little light reaches the bottom: the dark rock absorbs what does, and some inner sections of the park receive only about 33 minutes of direct sunlight per day.
The South Rim Drive opens early April through late November, with the visitor center and a short stretch of the rim remaining accessible in winter for cross-country skiing. The North Rim, reached by a separate gravel road from Crawford, opens late spring through fall only. Pulpit Rock is one of twelve marked overlooks on the South Rim Drive, with a short paved path from the parking pullout. The park is among the least-visited national parks in the lower 48, drawing around 300,000 visitors a year, fewer than nearby Rocky Mountain National Park sees in a single summer month.