Topsail Hill Preserve
— the tall white dune the road forgot.
Not only on a wall.
Topsail Hill Preserve, 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.
“A 1,640-acre preserve along three and a quarter miles of undeveloped gulf shore in south Walton, named for its topsail-shaped white quartz dunes that climb to twenty-five feet. Three coastal dune lakes — Campbell, Morris, and a portion of Stallworth — sit between the dunes and the sea, tannin-dark against the sand. The Outstanding Florida Waters designation has held the place quiet.
The place, in three passes.
Topsail Hill Preserve State Park covers 1,640 acres in south Walton County along Florida Scenic Highway 30A, between Miramar Beach and Seaside. The park protects 3.2 miles of undeveloped gulf shoreline and is named for its prominent white quartz dunes, which rise as high as 25 feet and recall the shape of a ship's topsail. Florida acquired the property in 1992; the state park opened to the public in 1999 and is managed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Three of the rare coastal dune lakes that punctuate 30A lie inside the park: Campbell Lake, Morris Lake, and part of Stallworth Lake. Coastal dune lakes are a globally unusual landform found only along this stretch of the Florida Panhandle and in a few sites in Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand and on the Oregon coast. The lakes are tea-coloured from cypress tannins and breach to the gulf intermittently in a brackish flush. All three carry Outstanding Florida Waters status.
Day-use access is limited and runs by tram from the park entrance on US 98 to the gulf, which keeps cars off the foredune. The state-park beach is among the quietest stretches of the otherwise busy 30A corridor, and the inland trails run through scrub habitat where the Choctawhatchee beach mouse, a federally endangered subspecies, still holds on. Camping is concentrated at Gregory E. Moore RV Resort, which keeps the day-use footprint small.
