Bear Lodge Mountains
— — the ponderosa rim the Lakota call Mato Paha.
Not only on a wall.
“A low range of pine-dark ridges running northwest from the main Black Hills, across Crook County and into the corner where Wyoming meets Montana and South Dakota. Warren Peaks tops out near 6,656 feet, but the range is read more by its texture than its height: ponderosa stands, limestone shelves, meadows that hold elk in the long shoulders of the year. Devils Tower lifts out of the south flank, which the Lakota called Mato Tipila, the bear's lodge that named the whole range. from the studio
Bear Lodge Mountains, 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 Bear Lodge Mountains form the western lobe of the Black Hills uplift, sitting almost entirely within Crook County in northeastern Wyoming. The range runs roughly thirty miles northwest from the South Dakota line and reaches its high point at Warren Peaks, 6,656 feet, in the Bear Lodge Ranger District of Black Hills National Forest. Geologically it is the same Precambrian core and Paleozoic limestone wrap as the Black Hills proper; the granite is just buried deeper here. Devils Tower National Monument sits on the southern flank above the Belle Fourche River, and the small town of Sundance is the main service stop.
The range carries a high-plains forest character that is rare for Wyoming: dense ponderosa pine with pockets of aspen and bur oak, threaded by limestone draws and meadows that stay green into August in a wet year. Annual precipitation runs roughly 20 to 24 inches, well above the surrounding sage steppe, which is why the trees are here at all. Resident elk, mule deer, and wild turkey work the meadows; the Bear Lodge Ranger District manages about 195,000 acres of the range as multiple-use national forest.
Most visitors reach the range from Interstate 90 at Sundance, climbing north on Warren Peaks Road and the network of forest routes around Reuter and Cook Lake. Cook Lake Recreation Area, about twenty miles north of Sundance, holds a small campground, a fishing lake, and a quiet trail loop, and is the easiest single-stop introduction. Devils Tower National Monument, on the southwest flank, draws the bulk of the region's traffic; the rest of the range stays comparatively empty. Hunting seasons in the fall bring the heaviest local use.