Estes Park downtown twilight Front Range Ceramic Art Tile
— — the lights coming on under Longs Peak.
Not only on a wall.
“The town at the eastern gate of Rocky Mountain National Park. Elkhorn Avenue runs east-west through Bond Park, and the storefronts come on while the Front Range to the west turns the colour of a thunderhead. Longs Peak holds the last alpenglow longer than anywhere else in the valley. The Big Thompson runs through town to Lake Estes. The Stanley Hotel sits on the hill above, white against the dark mountains. Elk move through the lawns at dusk, slow and unbothered.
Estes Park downtown twilight Front Range 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.
Estes Park sits at 7,522 feet on the eastern flank of the Front Range, in Larimer County, Colorado. The town fills the high valley where the Big Thompson and Fall rivers meet, up the Big Thompson Canyon on US-34 from Loveland on the plains. Joel Estes settled the valley in 1859 and gave it his name. The town incorporated in 1917, two years after the founding of Rocky Mountain National Park; the park's Beaver Meadows entrance station sits four miles west of downtown. From the western edge of town, Trail Ridge Road climbs to the Continental Divide at 12,183 feet, the highest continuous paved road in the United States.
At 7,522 feet the evening light lingers. The Front Range catches the sun's last warm angle and holds it for ten or fifteen minutes after the sun has dropped below the plains to the east. This is alpenglow, the pink-amber wash on bare rock and snow. Longs Peak, the dominant fourteen-thousand-footer to the southwest, keeps the colour longest because it is highest, at 14,259 feet. Once the alpenglow leaves the summits, the Front Range turns the deep slate-blue of the high-altitude blue hour, while the storefronts along Elkhorn Avenue and the lampposts around Bond Park come on warm against the cooling ridge.
Downtown Estes Park stays walkable in every season, though seasons change its texture. From late May through mid-October, Trail Ridge Road is open across the Continental Divide and the town fills with park visitors; Elkhorn Avenue's shops and restaurants run on long summer hours. September and October bring the elk rut; bulls bugle from the lawns around Lake Estes and pass through downtown at dusk, and the Town asks visitors to keep one hundred feet back. The Stanley Hotel, built in 1909 by F.O. Stanley, sits a half mile northeast of Bond Park and runs guided tours and dinners. The nearest entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, Beaver Meadows on US-36, is four miles west of downtown.