Olympic National Park
— — three weathers held by one mountain.
Not only on a wall.
“A million acres of three different worlds on one peninsula. Glaciated peaks at the centre, temperate rainforest on the western flank, a wild Pacific coast on the edge. The Hoh Valley measures rainfall in feet. Hurricane Ridge clears in late July. The coast keeps its driftwood and its weather.
Olympic National Park, 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.
Olympic National Park covers roughly 922,650 acres of the Olympic Peninsula in western Washington, designated a national park in 1938 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Three distinct ecosystems sit inside one boundary: the glaciated Olympic Mountains, crowned by Mount Olympus at 7,980 feet; the temperate rainforests of the Hoh and Quinault valleys; and roughly 73 miles of Pacific coastline from Kalaloch north to Shi Shi Beach. The peninsula is hemmed in by the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north and Hood Canal to the east.
The western valleys receive some of the heaviest rainfall in the contiguous United States. The Hoh Rain Forest averages about 140 inches a year, much of it carried in off the Pacific by frontal systems stalling against the Olympic Range. Seven major rivers drain the mountains: the Hoh, Quinault, Queets, Elwha, Skokomish, Dosewallips, and Duckabush. The Elwha was the site of the largest dam removal in United States history, completed in 2014, restoring salmon runs to the upper watershed for the first time in roughly a century.
Most visitors enter from Port Angeles, where the Hurricane Ridge road climbs to 5,242 feet for the broadest mountain view. That road is closed by snow from late autumn through early summer. The Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center sits at the end of an eighteen-mile spur off Highway 101. The coastal strip is reached separately from Forks. Park entry is thirty dollars per vehicle for a seven-day pass.