Leadville Harrison Avenue Sawatch Range Ceramic Art Tile
— — the highest main street, the Sawatch out behind it.
Not only on a wall.
“Leadville sits at 10,151 feet, the highest incorporated city in the United States. Harrison Avenue runs through the historic district, about seventy blocks of Victorian brick and storefront left over from the silver boom of 1880, when this was Colorado's second-largest city. Walk west off the avenue and the Sawatch Range comes into view: Mount Elbert and Mount Massive, the two highest summits in the Rocky Mountains, both above 14,400 feet. The whole downtown is a National Historic Landmark District. The Tabor Opera House on the avenue still hosts concerts. The light up here is thinner than at any other city in the country, and it shows in the colour of the brick.
Leadville Harrison Avenue Sawatch 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.
Leadville is the county seat of Lake County, Colorado, and at 10,151 feet (3,094 m) it is the highest incorporated city in the United States. The town sits in a broad upland valley at the headwaters of the Arkansas River, with the Sawatch Range rising directly to the west, including Mount Elbert (14,440 ft) and Mount Massive (14,428 ft), the two highest summits in the Rocky Mountains. Harrison Avenue is the main commercial corridor, running roughly north-south through the downtown core. Leadville is about 100 miles southwest of Denver by road, reached via U.S. Route 24 south from Interstate 70 at Minturn, or from the south through Buena Vista.
The Leadville Historic District covers about seventy blocks and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, one of the largest such districts in the American West. The brick and stone storefronts along Harrison Avenue date almost entirely from the silver boom of 1877, when discoveries of silver-bearing carbonate ore turned a small placer-mining camp into Colorado's second-largest city within three years. The Tabor Opera House, opened in 1879 by silver baron Horace Tabor, still stands at 308 Harrison Avenue. The Delaware Hotel (1886) and the Silver Dollar Saloon (1879) are within a short walk on the same avenue. Many façades retain their original cast-iron storefronts and decorative cornices.
Air pressure at 10,151 feet runs about thirty percent lower than at sea level, and the altitude shows in everything from cooking times to the afternoon thunderstorms that build over the Sawatch crest in summer. Leadville is one of the coldest places in the lower forty-eight, with overnight lows below freezing recorded in every month of the year. The view west from Harrison Avenue takes in the Sawatch Range, where fifteen of Colorado's fifty-plus fourteeners line the crest. Mount Elbert (14,440 ft) and Mount Massive (14,428 ft) anchor the skyline directly across the Arkansas River valley, the two highest summits in the Rocky Mountains. Visitors from sea level often feel the altitude during the first day's walk.