Wild mustangs of the Red Desert
— — horses where the rain never decides which ocean to join.
Not only on a wall.
“The Red Desert is the high, dry interior of Wyoming the interstate cuts straight across without slowing down. The Continental Divide splits and goes around it; rain that falls inside the basin runs to neither ocean. Across the sagebrush sea the Bureau of Land Management manages free-roaming herds in places named Adobe Town, Salt Wells Creek, and Little Colorado. Bands the colour of the country itself — duns, grullas, bays the shade of the buttes at evening. They move with the water, which is rarely where you expect, and they hold the ground that almost nothing else wants.
Wild mustangs of the Red Desert, 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 Red Desert is a roughly 9,300-square-mile high-cold-desert basin in south-central Wyoming, centred on the Great Divide Basin where the Continental Divide splits and re-joins around an endorheic depression. Elevations run between 6,500 and 7,500 feet. The Bureau of Land Management oversees grazing and wildlife on the federal portion, including several Herd Management Areas for free-roaming horses: Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek on the south rim, Little Colorado on the west, and the former White Mountain HMA near Rock Springs. The country south of Interstate 80 takes in the Adobe Town Wilderness Study Area.
There are no towns inside the Divide Basin. The closest are Wamsutter on Interstate 80 and Rock Springs to the west; between them a single ranching road, the Tri-Territory, runs north toward the Oregon Buttes and the South Pass country the wagon trains used. The mustang bands range across hundreds of square miles of sage. They water at sparse seeps and shallow playas, hold their distance from vehicles, and shift on the wind. Photographers who know the country plan for thirty miles of dirt to find a band at a mile away.
Public roads through the herd areas are unpaved BLM and county roads that turn impassable when wet. Carry water, two spare tires, a paper map, and a full tank; cell service is none. The basin can be visited year-round, but May and June offer green grass and foals on the ground, and September brings hard light and quiet. The Adobe Town and Killpecker Sand Dunes routes are typically driven from Rock Springs or Rawlins; the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program lists current herd-area access and adoption events.