Sugarite Canyon State Park
— a coal town the meadow took back.
Not only on a wall.
Sugarite Canyon State Park, 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 canyon sits in the northeast corner of New Mexico, on a back road out of Raton that crosses into Colorado without much fanfare. A company coal camp ran here from 1912 to 1941, then closed. Foundations show through the grass below Lake Maloya. Elk move through at dusk. The basalt cliffs above the lake catch the last of the light. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Sugarite Canyon State Park lies about 10 miles northeast of Raton in Colfax County, straddling the New Mexico-Colorado border at roughly 7,500 feet. The park covers around 3,600 acres of canyon, meadow, and ponderosa-aspen forest under the basalt rim of Johnson Mesa. Two lakes, Lake Maloya and Lake Alice, sit along the canyon floor. The park was established in 1985 on the site of the Sugarite coal camp, a company town that operated from 1912 until the mine closed in 1941.
What is striking at Sugarite is what is not there. The coal camp once housed roughly 1,000 people; the schoolhouse, the company store, and the rows of miners' cottages are gone, with only stone foundations showing through the meadow grass. The Coal Camp Trail walks past the interpretive signs that mark each building. Elk, mule deer, black bear, and the occasional mountain lion move through the canyon. The basalt cliffs above the lakes hold the light long after the canyon floor cools.
The park is open year-round, with a day-use fee per vehicle and four developed campgrounds, including Soda Pocket up on the rim above the canyon. Lake Maloya is the main fishing water, stocked with rainbow trout; no-wake boating is allowed. Trails include the Coal Camp interpretive loop, the Opportunity Trail, and the Ponderosa Ridge climb up to Soda Pocket. Winter brings snow heavy enough for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing on the same trails.
