Beartooth Highway top-of-the-world plateau
— — the road that runs out of mountain to climb.
Not only on a wall.
“A stretch of US 212 that climbs out of the trees and stays above them. The top of the world here is a tundra plateau pitched near 10,900 feet, with snowbanks holding into July and small alpine lakes set among the granite. Charles Kuralt once called it the most beautiful drive in America. It opens late, in the last week of May if the plows are lucky, and closes again with the first heavy snow in October. The traffic thins above the switchbacks. The air gets quiet. — from the studio
Beartooth Highway top-of-the-world plateau, 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 Beartooth Highway is a 68-mile stretch of US Route 212 connecting Red Lodge, Montana to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone at Cooke City. It was completed in 1936 and designated an All-American Road in 2002. The high plateau section, often called the top of the world, sits above tree line on the Beartooth Plateau, a Precambrian granite shelf shared by Montana and Wyoming. Snowmelt fills hundreds of small lakes across the tundra. The road is plowed open in late May and closes with the first sustained snow, usually by mid-October.
Above 10,000 feet the air carries roughly two-thirds of the oxygen at sea level, and the weather changes faster than a driver expects. Thunderheads build off the Absaroka Range to the south through July and August afternoons, and snow squalls are common on the plateau in any month. Wildflowers — alpine forget-me-not, moss campion, sky pilot — bloom in a short window from late June into early August, holding low against the wind. The Custer Gallatin National Forest manages the corridor and advises travellers to carry layers even when Red Lodge below is in the eighties.
The road's season is short and exact. Plows begin clearing in early May and the highway typically opens by the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, though late storms have pushed the opening into June. Full closure follows the first heavy snow, usually between the second week of October and the end of the month. Through July and August the plateau holds a brief alpine summer; by early September the willows along the lakes turn copper. The Montana Department of Transportation posts current status, and the Beartooth Ranger District in Red Lodge confirms conditions by phone.