Shoshone National Forest
— — the first forest the country ever set aside.
Not only on a wall.
“The oldest national forest in the country, signed into protection in 1891 and stretching from the Montana line down to the Wind River Range. Granite, lodgepole, and the long Wapiti Valley road that carries traffic east out of Yellowstone toward Cody. Grizzlies still range here. Gannett Peak holds the state's high point under permanent snow. The light changes minute by minute on the Absaroka volcanics, and most of the forest you cannot drive to at all. — from the studio
Shoshone National Forest, 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.
Shoshone National Forest covers roughly 2.4 million acres along the eastern slope of the Continental Divide in northwest Wyoming, from the Montana border south through the Absaroka, Wind River, and Beartooth ranges. It was the first federally protected forest in the United States, set aside in 1891 under the Forest Reserve Act signed by President Benjamin Harrison. The forest wraps the eastern boundary of Yellowstone and includes Gannett Peak, the highest point in Wyoming at 13,809 feet. Five wilderness areas, including the Absaroka-Beartooth and the Fitzpatrick, account for more than half the land.
Elevations range from about 4,600 feet in the Clarks Fork valley to Gannett Peak's 13,809-foot summit, and the weather climbs with the ground. The Beartooth Highway, US 212, crests at 10,947 feet and is typically open only from late May to mid-October. Summer afternoons build quick thunderstorms over the Absarokas; mornings along the Wapiti Valley road into Yellowstone's East Entrance are often still and cold. The forest holds the largest concentration of glaciers in the American Rockies, clustered in the Wind River Range.
Most visitors arrive from Cody on US 14/16/20, the Wapiti Valley route that Theodore Roosevelt once called the fifty most beautiful miles in America, on the way to Yellowstone's East Entrance. The Beartooth Highway from Red Lodge, Montana, drops in through the northern end. There are no entrance fees for the forest itself, though developed campgrounds charge nightly rates. Bear spray is recommended throughout; the area contains one of the densest grizzly populations in the lower forty-eight, monitored by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team.