Pagosa Hot Springs Resort San Juans Ceramic Art Tile
— — the steam the river breathes in winter.
Not only on a wall.
“The river bends through Pagosa Springs and the steam rises off the water in every season. At the centre of the resort the Mother Spring is the deepest geothermal hot spring measured anywhere; a state-run sounding lowered a line past 1,002 feet without striking bottom. Twenty-three pools terrace down to the San Juan River, each held at a different temperature, the colour shifting with the minerals. In January the steam meets the snow above the bank and the whole property reads as one slow exhalation. The Utes called it Pagosah: healing waters.
Pagosa Hot Springs Resort San Juans 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.
Pagosa Springs sits in Archuleta County in southwestern Colorado, where US Highway 160 crosses the San Juan River at roughly 7,126 feet of elevation. The town carries about 1,700 year-round residents and lies thirty-five miles east of Durango, an hour west of Wolf Creek Pass, one of the snowiest highway summits in the lower forty-eight. The Springs Resort & Spa occupies the south bank of the river at the centre of town, with twenty-three terraced mineral pools dropping toward the water. The geothermal field beneath the town is fed by a deep fault system at the western edge of the Rio Grande Rift; the resort sits directly above the Mother Spring, the source vent for the entire field. The Ute name Pagosah translates roughly as healing waters.
The Mother Spring at the centre of the resort is the deepest geothermal hot spring measured anywhere on record. A state-run weighted-line sounding descended past 1,002 feet without striking bottom; Guinness World Records logs it as the deepest known. Surface temperature at the source vent reaches about 144 degrees Fahrenheit, too hot to enter, so the water is cooled and routed through twenty-three terraced pools held between roughly 83 and 114 degrees. The mineral profile is dominated by sodium bicarbonate and sulphates, with measurable lithium and trace iron. The colour shifts with the chemistry: a pale teal at the cooler pools, a slow grey-blue at the warmer ones.
The pools run through every season, but the place reads most clearly in winter. Snow falls heavy along the San Juan front. Wolf Creek Ski Area, twenty-three miles east of town at the pass summit, averages more than 430 inches a season, the most of any major Colorado resort, and runs one of the longest ski calendars in the state. When the air drops below freezing, steam rises off the twenty-three pools and the open San Juan River in plumes that hang in the bowl of the town. Summer brings the snowmelt run-off and a different crowd, the same hot water less visible against warmer air. Spring is the quietest stretch; the aspen are still bare.