Kelly warm springs
— — the steam rising where the snow won't hold.
Not only on a wall.
“A shallow pond that stays near body temperature year round, fed by a spring in the sage flats outside the hamlet of Kelly. The Tetons sit white on the western horizon. Locals drift through on inner tubes in spring runoff; in January the surface lifts a quiet plume of steam that you can see from the road. The goldfish people once dumped in are part of the story now. — from the studio
Kelly warm springs, 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.
Kelly Warm Spring lies in the Gros Ventre River valley near the village of Kelly, Wyoming, just inside the eastern edge of Grand Teton National Park. The pond sits at roughly 6,660 feet on the sage flats below the Gros Ventre Range, with the Teton skyline rising west across the valley floor. A geothermal seep keeps the water near 80°F throughout the year, even when the surrounding meadows freeze hard. The site is reached by a short gravel pull-off on the Gros Ventre Road, a few miles east of the Kelly post office.
The spring discharges into a shallow pond perhaps two acres across, then drains into Ditch Creek and eventually the Gros Ventre River. The constant warmth makes it one of the few open-water spots in Jackson Hole through deep winter, when surface temperatures elsewhere drop well below freezing. The same warmth has, for decades, sheltered released pet goldfish and tropical fish that survived and bred in numbers high enough to draw attention from the National Park Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
Access is free and unstaffed. The pull-off on the Gros Ventre Road has room for a handful of cars and no facilities. Tubers float through in May and June when the air is still cold but the water carries a person comfortably. Winter visitors come for the contrast: a steaming pond at the base of snowbound foothills. The Park Service asks visitors not to release fish, plants, or other animals into the water, since the warmth lets non-native species establish quickly.