Beaver Falls
— the blue the limestone keeps giving back.
Not only on a wall.
Beaver Falls, 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.
“Past Supai village, past Havasu Falls, past the chained descent at Mooney, Beaver Falls is the one most hikers turn back before reaching. A staircase of low travertine terraces in that same impossible blue-green, three more miles down a canyon that keeps narrowing. The water builds the rock as it falls, calcium carbonate laid down a layer at a time.
The place, in three passes.
Beaver Falls sits in Havasu Canyon on the Havasupai Reservation, about four miles below Mooney Falls and roughly fourteen miles on foot from Hualapai Hilltop in the western Grand Canyon region. Access requires a permit from the Havasupai Tribe and a hike or pack trip in from the rim, with no day-use option. The falls form a series of low travertine terraces in Havasu Creek, which drains south toward its confluence with the Colorado River near river mile 157.
The blue-green colour comes from calcium carbonate dissolved out of the limestone aquifer feeding Havasu Creek. As the water emerges and slows over the terraces, the mineral precipitates out as travertine, slowly building the same ledges it falls over. The creek runs around 70 degrees Fahrenheit year-round because the source is spring-fed rather than snowmelt, which is why the colour holds even in winter when the rim country above is under snow. The same chemistry colours Havasu and Mooney Falls upstream.
Reaching Beaver Falls means a permit from the Havasupai Tribal Tourism Office, an eight-mile descent from Hualapai Hilltop to Supai village, two more miles down to the campground, and another four miles down-canyon past Mooney's bolted chain descent. Permits sell out within minutes when they open each February. The round trip from camp is a full day on foot. Flash flood risk closes the lower canyon in monsoon afternoons between July and September, and the tribe issues no day-use passes.
