Loop Road Big Cypress cypress dome
— a cypress dome standing in slow water.
Not only on a wall.
Loop Road Big Cypress cypress dome, 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.
“Loop Road is a 24-mile gravel half-loop off the Tamiami Trail, threading the southern edge of Big Cypress National Preserve. Cypress domes rise out of the slough — circles of bald cypress with the tallest trees at the center, where the water is deepest. The road passes alligator holes, wading birds, and the occasional Florida panther track in the mud. The pavement ends at Pinecrest; the wildness begins. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Loop Road, designated State Road 94, is a 24-mile half-loop branching south off the Tamiami Trail (US 41) within Big Cypress National Preserve. The preserve, established in 1974 as the first national preserve in the United States, protects 729,000 acres of cypress swamp, wet prairie, and pineland immediately north of Everglades National Park. About nine miles of Loop Road remain paved at the eastern and western ends; the middle stretch is unpaved limestone gravel, passable to most vehicles in the dry season.
Cypress domes are the signature feature along Loop Road. They form in shallow limestone depressions where water collects and holds longest; bald cypress and pond cypress grow tallest at the deepest center, giving the dome its rounded silhouette from the road. Through the wet season, sheet flow moves south through the preserve at about a quarter mile per day, feeding the freshwater estuaries of the Ten Thousand Islands. In the dry winter months, alligator holes hold the last open water and concentrate wading birds.
The Loop Road Education Center near Pinecrest is the trailhead for the Loop Road Trail and the usual orientation stop. The gravel middle stretch is best driven slowly in a high-clearance vehicle and is sometimes closed after heavy summer rain. December through April is the cool, dry, low-mosquito window — winter days bring concentrated wildlife at the gator holes. Camping is permitted at the primitive Loop Road Campground, and the Florida Trail crosses near Forty Mile Bend at the east end.
