Cheyenne Bottoms wetland
— the marsh the whole continent stops at.
Not only on a wall.
Cheyenne Bottoms wetland, 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 shallow basin in Barton County where two flyways braid together. Half a million shorebirds pass through in spring — sandpipers, plovers, white-faced ibis, the occasional whooping crane. The water is rarely deep; the sky is the largest thing in the frame. Locals time their drives along the auto route to the hour before sundown, when the levees catch the colour and the wind drops for a minute.
The place, in three passes.
Cheyenne Bottoms is a 41,000-acre natural land subsidence basin north of Great Bend, the largest interior marsh in the United States. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks manages roughly 19,857 acres as a public wildlife area; The Nature Conservancy holds the adjoining 8,036-acre preserve. The basin sits in the Central Flyway and was designated a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1988. Water is held in five managed pools fed by the Arkansas River and Wet Walnut Creek.
The pools are shallow by design, most under three feet, which is what makes the place work for shorebirds. Mudflats exposed by drawdowns feed the migrating flocks, and the Wet Walnut and Arkansas inflows are doled out through gates along the levee road. In dry years the basin reads more like prairie than wetland; in wet years the surface mirrors the sky for miles. The Kansas Wetlands Education Center on K-156 keeps a current water-level board.
Spring migration peaks late April through mid-May; an estimated 45 percent of North American shorebirds stop here on the northbound passage, including most of the continent's white-rumped and Baird's sandpipers. Fall return runs July through October. Whooping cranes drop in during November on the route between Wood Buffalo and Aransas. Winter brings bald eagles to the open water at the dam. The auto tour route is open year-round, dawn to dusk.
