Paradise Valley
— — the river the mountains kept for themselves.
Not only on a wall.
“A long bowl of grass and cottonwood between the Absaroka and Gallatin ranges, with the Yellowstone running through it on its way north from the park. Ranches, a few small lodges, Chico Hot Springs at the southern end. Drift boats put in at dawn and the wind comes down off Emigrant Peak in the late afternoon. Nobody calls it scenic. They call it the valley.
Paradise Valley, 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.
Paradise Valley runs roughly 80 kilometres south from Livingston to Gardiner along U.S. Highway 89, hemmed on the east by the Absaroka Range and on the west by the Gallatins. The Yellowstone River, the longest undammed river in the contiguous United States, threads its centre. The valley's southern gate is the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park; its northern hinge is the town of Livingston, a Northern Pacific railroad town founded in 1882. Emigrant Peak rises to 3,084 metres above the valley floor.
The Yellowstone is the spine of the valley and the reason most visitors come. From Gardiner to Livingston it runs about 80 kilometres of fishable freestone water, with strong hatches of salmonflies in late June and Pale Morning Duns through July. Brown and rainbow trout dominate; native Yellowstone cutthroat hold in the upper reaches. Drift boats launch from Carbella, Mallards Rest, and Loch Leven. The river ran high and warm through the 2022 flood and has been recovering since.
The valley reads four ways. Spring runs cold and high until the cottonwoods leaf out in mid-May. Summer brings dry afternoons and the salmonfly hatch around the solstice. Autumn is the long quiet stretch — golden cottonwoods along the river through October, with elk bugling out of the Absaroka foothills. Winter pulls the temperature to minus 25°C on the coldest nights, and Chico Hot Springs, established 1900, keeps its two pools open straight through the cold months.