Pawnee Rock State Historic Site
— the rock the Santa Fe Trail counted by.
Not only on a wall.
Pawnee Rock State Historic Site, 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 sandstone bluff rising out of the wheat country south of the Arkansas River, halfway across Kansas. For sixty years the wagons of the Santa Fe Trail used Pawnee Rock as the milestone that meant they were halfway between Missouri and New Mexico, and as the last good place to look out before the long open prairie. Quarrymen took most of it down for railroad ballast. What remains still holds the view.
The place, in three passes.
Pawnee Rock is a Dakota sandstone outcrop in Barton County, Kansas, just north of the small town of Pawnee Rock and a short drive off U.S. 56. The site is administered by the Kansas Historical Society and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. Once tall enough to dominate the surrounding plain, the rock was substantially quarried in the 1870s and 1880s for stone used in railroad construction and local building, leaving the present low summit. A pavilion and stairs built in 1912 lead to the overlook.
From 1821 until the railroad reached New Mexico in 1880, the Santa Fe Trail ran past the foot of the rock, and travellers counted it as the midpoint of the 800-mile route between Independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe. Diarists from the period including Josiah Gregg and Susan Shelby Magoffin describe climbing the rock for the view and carving names into the soft sandstone. The site also marked the edge of Pawnee, Kiowa, and Comanche hunting country, and several skirmishes occurred within sight of the summit.
The site is free and open daily during daylight hours. A short paved path and a flight of stone steps climb to the 1912 pavilion at the summit, with interpretive panels on the trail era and the quarrying that reduced the rock. The drive in from Great Bend is about 23 miles southwest on U.S. 56; from Larned and the Fort Larned National Historic Site it is roughly 18 miles east. Best light is the hour before sunset, when the sandstone holds a long warm tone.
