Palmdale
— — the desert where the prototypes still fly first.
Not only on a wall.
“On the Antelope Valley floor north of the San Gabriel Mountains, at about 2,650 feet of elevation. Plant 42 sits on the south edge of town, where the SR-71, the B-2, and most of the country's classified airframes were assembled and first flown. Poppies come up across the valley in spring, the Joshua trees hold the rest of the year, and the wind moves through whether anyone is watching.
Palmdale, 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.
Palmdale sits in the Antelope Valley in northern Los Angeles County, on the western edge of the Mojave Desert at about 2,650 feet of elevation. The city held roughly 170,000 residents on the 2020 census, making it one of the largest cities in the Antelope Valley alongside neighbouring Lancaster. It was incorporated in 1962 and grew rapidly through the late twentieth century as the aerospace plants on its southern edge expanded. The San Gabriel Mountains rise to the south, separating the high desert from the Los Angeles basin below.
Air Force Plant 42, on the south edge of Palmdale, is the production and flight-test facility where Lockheed's Skunk Works, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing assembled the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 stealth fighter, the B-2 Spirit bomber, and the B-21 Raider, among other classified airframes. The plant's runway, at about 12,000 feet, doubles as a Space Shuttle backup landing site. NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center operates a satellite facility here. The first flights of many of America's prototype aircraft happened in this desert sky.
The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, about fifteen miles west of Palmdale near Lancaster, protects roughly 1,780 acres of grassland where Eschscholzia californica blooms most years from mid-March to mid-April. Bloom strength varies sharply with winter rainfall; superblooms colour the hills orange to the horizon, while dry years thin the show. Joshua trees and rabbitbrush hold the rest of the desert palette through the long dry summer. The wind through the valley is near-constant and shapes the trees, the runways, and the way the dust moves.