Mount Scott summit overlook
— the granite the prairie wears as a crown.
Not only on a wall.
Mount Scott summit overlook, 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 2,464-foot granite hump on the eastern edge of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. A paved road climbs the back side; the overlook faces south over the Lawton plain and Lake Lawtonka. Bison move below in the grass. The wind is constant. People come at sunset and stay until the colour goes out of the rock.
The place, in three passes.
Mount Scott rises to 2,464 feet on the eastern boundary of the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, about fifteen miles north of Lawton in southwestern Oklahoma. The mountain is the second-highest summit in the Wichitas and the only one reached by paved road; State Highway 49 spurs three miles to the top. The granite is roughly 525 million years old, older than the rock of the Rocky Mountains by an order of magnitude. From the overlook the refuge spreads south toward Lake Lawtonka and the Comanche-Kiowa plain.
The summit is bare Cambrian granite, weathered into the rounded boulders the Wichitas are known for. Geologists at the Oklahoma Geological Survey date the rock to roughly 525 million years; it surfaced again when the surrounding sedimentary cover eroded away. The surface holds heat through the evening, which is why the bison and longhorn herds in the refuge below cluster on the south-facing slopes after sunset. The crown of the mountain is broken into ledges that face the prairie like seats.
The summit road is open daily from dawn to dusk, with no admission fee. The drive from the refuge visitor centre takes about ten minutes; the overlook has two small parking loops, the lower of which empties earlier and gives the same view. Rangers close the road during ice. The Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, covers 59,020 acres of mixed-grass prairie and granite ridges, with free-ranging bison, longhorn, and elk along the route up.
