Susquehanna River
— — a wide water carrying the whole north down to the bay.
Not only on a wall.
“The Susquehanna runs roughly 444 miles from a small lake in Cooperstown, New York, through the heart of Pennsylvania, and into the head of the Chesapeake at Havre de Grace, Maryland. The Maryland reach is the wide one: granite islands, the long pool above Conowingo Dam, bald eagles standing on the tailrace pylons in January. Lighthouses keep watch where the river meets the bay. The current is patient. The water carries the whole northern watershed past you and out to salt. from the studio
Susquehanna River, 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.
The Susquehanna is the longest river on the East Coast of the United States, running about 444 miles from Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, New York, through Pennsylvania and into the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace, Maryland. Its watershed covers roughly 27,500 square miles and provides about half of the freshwater entering the bay. The Maryland reach is brief but consequential: the river crosses the fall line and widens into the tidal pool behind Conowingo Dam, which was completed in 1928 and rises 105 feet above the riverbed. The Concord Point Lighthouse, lit in 1827, still marks the mouth.
Below Conowingo Dam the river runs cold and fast over a granite bedrock floor, and the tailrace pool draws striped bass, walleye, and channel catfish in serious numbers. From the dam to the mouth at Havre de Grace is roughly ten river miles, dotted with islands such as Garrett, Robert, and Spencer that hold heron rookeries. The Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway tracks the western bank through Susquehanna State Park, where the towpath of the old Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal, completed in 1839, still runs beside the water past the restored Rock Run Mill.
January and February pull the country's largest winter gathering of bald eagles to Conowingo, where the dam's open turbines keep the water free of ice and stunned fish flush downstream. Several hundred eagles often roost in the cottonwoods above Fisherman's Park on a cold morning. April brings spawning runs of American shad and river herring that have been recovering since the building of fish lifts at the dam in 1972. By late October the surrounding hardwoods turn the river corridor red and gold, and the migrating tundra swans begin to settle on the flats above Havre de Grace.