Mooney Falls
— the turquoise the canyon keeps to itself.
Not only on a wall.
Mooney 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.
“The tallest of the waterfalls in Havasu Canyon, dropping about 200 feet into a travertine pool the colour of an oxidised copper roof. The descent from the rim runs through two short tunnels and down a series of chains and iron stakes set into the cliff. The fall is named for Daniel Mooney, a miner who died here in 1882. The water comes out of Havasu Creek and stays this colour all year because of dissolved calcium carbonate.
The place, in three passes.
Mooney Falls sits in Havasu Canyon on the Havasupai Reservation, a side canyon of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. The waterfall drops about 200 feet, the tallest in a chain that also includes Havasu Falls and Beaver Falls along Havasu Creek. Access is on foot only. The reservation village of Supai lies eight miles down the canyon from the Hualapai Hilltop trailhead, and the falls are a further mile and a half past the campground. All visits require a permit issued in advance by the Havasupai Tribe.
Havasu Creek runs out of a spring system that delivers high concentrations of dissolved calcium carbonate. As the water tumbles, the carbonate precipitates out and coats every surface it touches, building the travertine shelves and turning the pools a saturated turquoise. The colour holds through the year because the supply is groundwater rather than seasonal runoff. Flash floods in 2008 and 2010 reshaped the pool below the fall significantly, and the canyon downstream toward Beaver Falls is still recovering its old geometry.
Permits are required and sell out within hours of release each February. There is no day-hiking; every visitor stays at least one night at the Havasupai campground or the Supai Lodge. The descent past Mooney from the campground passes through two travertine tunnels and down a near-vertical wall on chains and iron stakes installed by miners in the 1880s. The route is slick when wet and is not recommended in rain. The canyon closes during monsoon season flash-flood warnings.
