Angostura Reservoir
— prairie sandstone and a warm lake.
Not only on a wall.
Angostura 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 long reservoir on the Cheyenne River below the Black Hills, with red-sandstone bluffs and rare sand beaches for South Dakota. Built in the 1940s for Cheyenne River irrigation. The water warms early in summer. Walleye and smallmouth come up on the rocky points. The wind on the south end can stand a tent up sideways.
The place, in three passes.
Angostura Reservoir sits on the Cheyenne River in Fall River County, about ten miles southeast of Hot Springs and the southern edge of the Black Hills. The dam was completed in 1949 as part of the Bureau of Reclamation's Angostura Unit, supplying irrigation water to roughly twelve thousand acres of farmland. At full pool the lake covers about 4,700 surface acres with thirty-six miles of shoreline. The surrounding red sandstone bluffs and the unusually long sand beaches give the reservoir a feel closer to a southwestern lake than a Northern Plains impoundment.
Walleye is the headline fish at Angostura, with smallmouth bass, northern pike, yellow perch, and channel catfish all stocked by South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. The lake warms quickly in May and is reliably swimmable by Memorial Day, which is rare in the high plains. Submerged rock points along the western shore hold smallmouth through July. Reservoir levels swing with irrigation draws and snowpack, so late-summer pool can drop several feet below the spring high; the GFP site posts current elevations.
Angostura State Recreation Area sits along the eastern and southern shores and is the main public access point, with four campgrounds totalling about 160 sites, a marina, and four sand swim beaches. A state park entrance license is required; daily and annual options are sold at the gate and online. Hot Springs is the nearest town for groceries and fuel, ten miles north on US-385. Wind Cave National Park and the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs are both within a half-hour drive, which makes Angostura a workable base for the southern Hills.
