Mount Marathon over Seward
— the mountain a town runs up every Fourth of July.
Not only on a wall.
Mount Marathon over Seward, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Mount Marathon stands directly behind Seward, the closing wall at the head of Resurrection Bay. Most of the year it is a steep face of spruce, alder, and scree above a small coastal town. On the Fourth of July it becomes the country's oldest mountain race, run almost straight up and back down to the streets of town. The mountain decides who wins; the town watches from the curb. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Mount Marathon rises to 3,022 feet directly behind the town of Seward on the western shore of Resurrection Bay, at the southern end of the Kenai Peninsula. The peak forms part of the coastal wall that separates the town from the Harding Icefield and Kenai Fjords National Park to the west. Seward itself is the southern terminus of the Alaska Railroad and the Seward Highway, 127 road miles south of Anchorage, with a year-round population around 2,700.
The Mount Marathon Race has been run every Fourth of July since 1915, making it one of the oldest mountain races in the United States. The course leaves Fourth Avenue in downtown Seward, climbs roughly 3,022 vertical feet on a brutal, mostly unmarked route up scree and brush, and drops back down through a chute and a creek bed to the same street. Top men finish under 42 minutes; the town fills with around 30,000 spectators.
Seward is reached by car or train from Anchorage and by cruise ship in summer; the cruise terminal sits at the foot of the mountain. Visitors who do not race climb the Jeep Trail to the racer's lower ledge, about an hour up, for the view over Resurrection Bay. Exit Glacier and the Kenai Fjords boat fleet are the larger tourist draws; Mount Marathon is the town's own landmark.
