West Thumb Geyser Basin lakeside
— — where the hot springs walk into the lake.
Not only on a wall.
“A geyser basin that ends at a shoreline. Pools the colour of bottle glass open right at the edge of Yellowstone Lake, and the boardwalk traces the rim between them. Fishing Cone sits a few feet out in the water, a small chimney the early travellers wrote about. Steam comes up off the cold lake in long sheets when the morning is still. The basin is quieter than Old Faithful, an hour to the north, and reads as the place where two systems meet without arguing.
West Thumb Geyser Basin lakeside, 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.
West Thumb Geyser Basin sits on the western lobe of Yellowstone Lake, the largest high-elevation lake in North America at roughly 7,733 feet. The thumb itself is a younger caldera nested inside the broader Yellowstone caldera, formed by an eruption around 174,000 years ago. A half-mile boardwalk loop links Abyss Pool, Black Pool, Twin Geysers, and the shoreline Fishing Cone. The basin lies thirty-two road miles north of the South Entrance and is open to vehicles from early May through early November, depending on snow on Craig Pass.
The pools at West Thumb are the colour they are because of what is dissolved and suspended in them. Abyss Pool reaches around 53 feet deep and reads as a clear emerald near the rim and a darker blue down the throat; the depth and the silica-rich water do the work. Fishing Cone, just offshore, was famous in the 1870s for the trick of catching a cutthroat in the cold lake and cooking it in the boiling cone without moving the rod, a practice the Park Service ended decades ago.
The road around West Thumb, the Grand Loop's South Rim segment, closes to wheeled vehicles from early November to mid-May and reopens to oversnow travel by snowcoach and snowmobile in late December. Through that winter window the basin is reached on guided trips out of Old Faithful or the South Entrance; the lake stays frozen well into May. Summer crowds peak in July, but the basin is small enough that an early walk before nine usually has the boardwalk almost to itself.