Lookout Mountain
— — the ridge that holds the river in its lap.
Not only on a wall.
“A long sandstone ridge above the Tennessee River, climbing from Chattanooga southwest into Georgia and Alabama. Point Park crowns the north end, where Union troops fought the Battle Above the Clouds in November 1863. Down the side, the Incline Railway still pulls cars up grades over seventy percent, and Ruby Falls drops a hundred and forty-five feet inside the mountain. From the bluff the river bends like a written letter.
Lookout Mountain, 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.
The place, in three passes.
Lookout Mountain is a narrow sandstone ridge along the southwestern Cumberland Plateau, running roughly 134 km from Chattanooga, Tennessee into northeast Alabama by way of northwest Georgia. The north end rises to about 2,389 ft above sea level, more than 1,300 ft above the Tennessee River curling below. The ridge holds the towns of Lookout Mountain in both Tennessee and Georgia, the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park at Point Park, and on a clear morning, sight lines east toward the Great Smoky Mountains.
On 24 November 1863, Union forces under Joseph Hooker fought up the steep western slope and drove Confederate troops off the summit in what newspapers called the Battle Above the Clouds. The fight set up Grant's larger victory at Missionary Ridge the next day and helped lift the siege of Chattanooga. Congress made Point Park the centerpiece of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1890, the first national military park in the United States, and the cannons there still face the bend in the river.
Three commercial attractions share the ridge above Chattanooga. The Incline Railway, opened in 1895, climbs grades steeper than seventy-two percent and is one of the steepest passenger railways still running anywhere. Ruby Falls, found in 1928 and opened the next year, drops 145 ft inside a cave 1,120 ft below the surface. Rock City, on the Georgia side at the summit, opened in 1932 and runs the famous See Rock City barn-roof signs across the South. Point Park, run by the National Park Service, charges a modest fee.