Sheridan Lake
— the green the pines leave on the water.
Not only on a wall.
Sheridan Lake, 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 reservoir Spring Creek made when the Civilian Conservation Corps dammed it in 1939. A ring of ponderosa pine, a swim beach on the north shore, a marina that rents kayaks by the hour. The water reads dark green where the trees lean over it, glacier-clear in the middle on a still morning. People come for the trout and stay because nobody is in a hurry.
The place, in three passes.
Sheridan Lake sits in the Black Hills National Forest about 18 miles southwest of Rapid City, South Dakota. The U.S. Forest Service manages a roughly 383-acre reservoir on Spring Creek, formed in 1939 by a Civilian Conservation Corps dam. Two developed day-use areas, the North Cove swim beach and the South Shore marina, ring the water. Ponderosa pine and Black Hills spruce hold the shoreline. The Centennial Trail crosses the dam, linking the lake to a 111-mile route running south toward Wind Cave National Park.
The lake is fed by Spring Creek and stocked by South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks with rainbow trout, splake, and northern pike. Surface temperatures climb into the upper sixties by July, low enough that the deeper pools stay cool for the trout through the summer. The water reads a darker green than the glacial lakes further west, coloured by the pine pollen and the tannins running down off the slopes. Ice fishing opens once the lake locks in, usually by mid-December.
The Black Hills hold four distinct seasons close together. Summer brings the swimmers, the pontoon rentals, and the afternoon thunderstorms that build fast over the high country and drop just as quickly. October turns the aspen and birch on the slopes a pale gold against the evergreen. Winter ice averages around twelve inches by January, thick enough for the ice-fishing shacks that line the south cove. Spring runoff from the snowpack raises the lake nearly six feet in a normal year.
