Visalia
— — the orange grove that opens onto a wall of giant trees.
Not only on a wall.
“The valley town that lets you out into the big trees. Orange groves and dairy on the flat, then forty-five miles east the road climbs into Sequoia and the trunks start. Downtown is a working main street with brick storefronts the same age as the railroad, a county courthouse, and a thrift store that smells like vanilla. The light here in late afternoon goes the colour of a peach skin. From the studio.
Visalia, 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.
Visalia sits on the floor of the San Joaquin Valley in Tulare County, California, about 230 miles north of Los Angeles and 45 miles west of the Generals Highway entrance to Sequoia National Park. Founded in 1852, it is the oldest town between Stockton and Los Angeles and the county seat of one of the highest-grossing agricultural counties in the United States. The city's population is roughly 141,000. The Kaweah River drains the Sierra above town and feeds the orchards and dairies that surround it on three sides.
The valley air is famously soft and famously hazy. In spring the orange and lemon blocks east of town bloom and the scent carries for miles on a still morning. In summer the temperature regularly climbs past 100°F and the Sierra Nevada disappears behind a wall of haze; in winter the tule fog can close the highway for days. The best hours are at the edges, when the light comes in low across the orchards and the front range cuts a hard blue line above the dairies toward Three Rivers.
Most visitors come through on the way to the big trees. The Foothills entrance to Sequoia National Park is about an hour east on Highway 198, climbing from valley floor to the Giant Forest at 6,400 feet and the General Sherman Tree. Downtown Visalia, anchored by Main Street and the 1935 Fox Theatre, makes the natural overnight: walkable, served by Highway 99 and the Amtrak San Joaquins, and full of family-run restaurants that have outlasted the chains. Sequoia is open year-round; the road to the Giant Forest requires chains in winter.