Wild Horse Reservoir
— the lake the long road delivers.
Not only on a wall.
Wild Horse Reservoir, 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 high-desert reservoir on the East Fork Owyhee, ringed by sagebrush flats and the long blue line of the Independence Mountains. Sixty-seven miles of two-lane gets you here from Elko. In winter the surface locks up and the ice-fishing shanties come out. In summer the wind moves across it like a hand across cloth. Locals come for the trout. The horizon does the rest.
The place, in three passes.
Wild Horse Reservoir lies in northern Elko County, Nevada, 67 miles north of Elko along NV-225, near the Idaho line. The dam impounds the East Fork of the Owyhee River at roughly 6,200 feet, holding about 71,000 acre-feet of water against the eastern flank of the Independence Mountains. The Wild Horse State Recreation Area, managed by Nevada State Parks since 1958, occupies the southern shore with a campground, a boat launch, and a day-use beach a few miles south of the village of Mountain City.
The reservoir is stocked annually with rainbow trout and holds wild populations of smallmouth bass, yellow perch, and black crappie. Drawdowns through summer feed downstream irrigation along the Owyhee, and the surface freezes solid most years by late December. Ice fishing through January and February is the local tradition; shanties cluster off the south arm near the state-park campground. The East Fork enters cold from the headwaters in the Independence Mountains and leaves warmer through the spillway gates.
Wild Horse runs through a clear cycle. Ice-out comes in April, when the south wind opens the south arm first. By June the sagebrush flats around the reservoir are in bloom and the trout fishing is at its peak. August brings high heat and lower water as drawdowns release toward downstream ranches. September clears and cools fast. By Thanksgiving the shoreline is rimed, and by Christmas the surface holds shanties again. The shoulder seasons are short and worth catching.
