Tobacco Roots range from Twin Bridges
— — a range that looks closer than it is.
Not only on a wall.
“From the bridge in Twin Bridges, the Tobacco Root Mountains rise east across the hayfields, a compact range with more than forty peaks above ten thousand feet. The town sits where the Beaverhead, Big Hole, and Ruby rivers braid into the Jefferson — three blue-ribbon trout rivers in one valley. The Tobacco Roots stay snow-streaked into July. From the studio, this is Montana's quiet corner: a fly-shop town, a long porch, and a range you can read from the road. from the studio
Tobacco Roots range from Twin Bridges, 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 Tobacco Root Mountains are a compact range in southwest Montana, lying mostly within Madison County between the Jefferson and Madison river valleys. The range covers roughly 600 square miles and holds more than forty peaks above 10,000 feet, with Hollowtop Mountain near 10,604 feet as the high point. Twin Bridges sits at about 4,590 feet on the west side, at the confluence of the Beaverhead, Big Hole, and Ruby rivers, where they form the Jefferson — one of the three streams Lewis and Clark named at Three Forks in 1805. The town's population is under 400.
Three blue-ribbon trout rivers meet at Twin Bridges: the Big Hole, the Beaverhead, and the Ruby. The town is the headquarters of R.L. Winston Rod Company, which has built bamboo and graphite fly rods there since the 1970s. Anglers from across the country plan trips around the late-June salmonfly hatch on the Big Hole. The Jefferson, formed at the confluence, runs north toward Three Forks where it joins the Madison and Gallatin to become the Missouri. The Tobacco Roots above shed snowmelt into all three drainages through midsummer.
Winter holds the range from October through April, with deep snow in the high cirques and ice on the rivers. Spring runoff peaks on the Big Hole in late May or early June. Wildflower meadows on the lower slopes bloom through July; alpine larch above the Mill Creek and South Boulder drainages turn gold in late September. Sheridan, Pony, and Virginia City sit around the range — Virginia City a preserved 1860s gold-rush town, twenty-eight miles southeast of Twin Bridges. Hunting season in October draws elk and mule deer hunters into the foothills.