Frontenac State Park bluff
— the ridge the hawks ride south on.
Not only on a wall.
Frontenac State Park bluff, 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 bluff at Frontenac State Park, four hundred and thirty feet above Lake Pepin where the Mississippi widens into its only natural lake. In late September the broad-winged hawks pour over the ridge by the thousand, riding the thermal that climbs the bluff face. In-Yan-Teopa, the limestone arch the Dakota named, stands a short walk from the overlook. The far shore is Wisconsin, the same view river painters worked from in the 1850s. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Frontenac State Park sits on a limestone bluff above Lake Pepin, the wide natural reach the Mississippi River forms between Red Wing and Wabasha. The park covers about 2,800 acres and was established in 1957. The bluff rises roughly 430 feet above the lake, with views across to Maiden Rock on the Wisconsin shore. The Mississippi Flyway runs the river corridor, and the state-recognized In-Yan-Teopa rock, a natural limestone arch named by the Dakota, stands a short walk from the overlook.
The bluff stands directly under one of the busiest pinch points on the Mississippi Flyway. From mid-September through mid-October, broad-winged hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, and bald eagles ride the thermal that climbs the bluff face on south winds, sometimes by the thousand in a single afternoon. Audubon and the Minnesota DNR count Frontenac among the state's premier raptor migration overlooks. Warblers move through in May, and tundra swans stage on Lake Pepin in November before freeze-up pushes them south to the Mississippi backwaters.
The park is open year-round, day-use sunrise to ten p.m., with a Minnesota State Parks vehicle permit required. The main overlook and the In-Yan-Teopa loop are short walks from the upper parking lot; the longer Bluffside Trail descends roughly four hundred feet to the lake. Sand Point on the lake edge is reached by a separate access road. The campground has fifty-eight sites and is open through deer season. The town of Old Frontenac, a National Register historic district, sits at the foot of the bluff.
