Chief Joseph Scenic Byway Sunlight Basin
— — the road over Dead Indian Pass, then down into the open country.
Not only on a wall.
“Wyoming 296, between Cody and the Beartooth Highway. The byway climbs the long shoulder of Dead Indian Hill, switchbacks at the pass, and drops into Sunlight Basin, a wide grass-and-sage bowl rimmed by the Absaroka and Beartooth ranges. It is named for the Nez Perce leader who led his people through this country in 1877, ahead of the U.S. Army, on a route that crossed near the modern pass. Forty-six paved miles, almost no service stations, and the highest bridge in Wyoming over Sunlight Creek. Closed in heavy winter snow. from the studio
Chief Joseph Scenic Byway Sunlight Basin, 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 Chief Joseph Scenic Byway is Wyoming Highway 296, a forty-six-mile paved route between Wyoming 120 north of Cody and the Beartooth Highway at the edge of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. The road crests Dead Indian Pass at 8,071 feet, then drops into Sunlight Basin, the largest elk wintering ground in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The byway is named for Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, who led roughly seven hundred and fifty of his people through this country in the summer of 1877 on the retreat that ended at the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana, forty miles south of the Canadian border.
The byway is open year round but is not plowed as a priority route, and segments above the pass close in heavy winter storms; the Wyoming Department of Transportation maintains a 511 road-condition line. There is no entrance fee, no toll, and almost no service. The Sunlight Creek bridge, near mile twenty-eight from Cody, is the highest in Wyoming at about two hundred and eighty feet over the creek. The Crandall Ranger Station has the only public toilet on the route in shoulder season. Cell coverage is intermittent. Allow ninety minutes for the drive, longer if the elk are out.
Traffic on 296 averages a few hundred vehicles a day in summer and falls to a handful in winter, which is part of what the road is for. Sunlight Basin holds working cattle ranches dating to the 1880s, including the Two Dot and Sunlight Ranch holdings, and the wider basin is closed to motorised travel away from the highway. The elk herd that winters here numbers in the thousands; grizzly and wolf both range through. The Nez Perce National Historic Trail, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, runs parallel to the byway and is marked at several pullouts with interpretive panels.