Temperance River gorge
— the river that runs straight to the lake without rest.
Not only on a wall.
Temperance River gorge, 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 Temperance was named in the 1860s for what it lacked: a sandbar at its mouth, the bar every other North Shore river carried. No bar meant no temperance. The river drops the last mile through a narrow basalt slot canyon five to ten feet wide and forty feet deep, with footbridges crossing the slot and the water heard before it is seen. Hidden Falls cuts the gorge near the top. The river meets Lake Superior under a rust-coloured bridge with no shore between them.
The place, in three passes.
Temperance River State Park sits on the North Shore of Lake Superior about eighty miles up Highway 61 from Duluth, between the villages of Tofte and Schroeder in Cook County. The park covers roughly 540 acres on both sides of the river mouth and was established in 1957. The Superior Hiking Trail runs through the park along both rims of the gorge, and the Cross River and Caribou Falls waysides bracket it a few miles either side. Cook County keeps the highway open year-round.
The river drops its final mile through a slot canyon cut into roughly 1.1-billion-year-old basalt from the Midcontinent Rift, the same lava flows that built the rest of the North Shore. The slot narrows to five or ten feet across in places and runs about forty feet deep, with the water often hidden until a footbridge crosses directly over it. Hidden Falls sits near the upper end of the gorge. The river enters Lake Superior under Highway 61 with no shoreline between the canyon mouth and the open water.
The North Shore runs four distinct visiting seasons. Late May through mid-June brings the highest water and the loudest gorge. July and August are warm and dry. Late September through the second week of October is the peak fall-colour window, with sugar maple along the Sawtooth ridges turning before the lake-influenced shoreline. Winter holds the gorge in green ice; the Highway 61 corridor stays plowed and the trailheads stay open, though the slot itself becomes off-limits.
