Organ Mountains Soledad Canyon
— granite needles cut against a Chihuahuan sky.
Not only on a wall.
Organ Mountains Soledad Canyon, 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 canyon on the desert side of the Organ Mountains, a few miles east of Las Cruces. The peaks rise as bare granite spires that look more like the Tetons than anything else in New Mexico. Soledad Canyon trail climbs gently up a wash through ocotillo and yucca toward La Cueva and the cliffs. Mornings are cool. By noon the rock is hot enough to read through a boot sole.
The place, in three passes.
The Organ Mountains rise to 2,743 m at Organ Needle, a sawtooth granite ridge that walls off the eastern edge of the Mesilla Valley about 16 km east of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Soledad Canyon sits on the west slope, accessed from Dripping Springs Road and a short Bureau of Land Management spur. The range is the headline unit of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, designated by President Obama in 2014 and covering 196,776 hectares of Chihuahuan Desert and isolated mountain blocks across Doña Ana County.
The needles are not sandstone; they are a Tertiary granite that intruded the older volcanic country rock about 32 million years ago and weathered out as the surrounding tuff eroded away. The result is the cluster of vertical spires the Spanish heard as organ pipes and named for. Climbers know Sugarloaf, the Wedge, and the Rabbit Ears. La Cueva, the dark rock shelter at the canyon's head, was occupied by Jornada Mogollon people and later by the hermit Agostini Justiniani, who lived there until his murder in 1869.
Soledad Canyon trailhead is reached from U.S. 70, then south on Soledad Canyon Road past Dripping Springs Natural Area. BLM charges a small day-use fee at the staffed entrance. The main canyon trail runs about 5 km round trip with around 150 m of climb up a sandy wash, easy enough for an early-morning walk and brutal enough by 11 a.m. in summer that locals come at sunrise. Spring and late autumn are the comfortable seasons. The range sees occasional January snow on the high needles.
