Sylvan Lake granite shoreline
— a small lake the granite seems to be holding in cupped hands.
Not only on a wall.
Sylvan Lake granite shoreline, 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 small lake at the head of Needles Highway in Custer State Park, ringed by rounded granite outcrops that drop straight to the water. The shoreline loop runs about a mile. People swim off the rocks in July, fish off the dam, and start the climb to Black Elk Peak from the back of the lake. The granite is the same Precambrian rock as the Needles spires above.
The place, in three passes.
Sylvan Lake sits at roughly 6,200 feet elevation in the southern Black Hills, at the top of Needles Highway in Custer State Park, South Dakota. The lake is artificial, created in 1881 when Theodore Reder dammed Sunday Gulch Creek between two granite outcrops. It covers about 17 acres. A shoreline loop trail of roughly one mile circles the lake, crossing the dam and a short rock tunnel cut through the granite. The lake is the western trailhead for the climb to Black Elk Peak.
The shoreline is Harney Peak Granite, a Precambrian intrusion roughly 1.7 billion years old, the same rock that forms the spires along Needles Highway and the summit block of Black Elk Peak (formerly Harney Peak). At the lake the granite weathers into rounded domes that drop straight into the water, creating the unusual shoreline that gives the place its character. Theodore Reder chose the gap between two of these outcrops as the dam site in 1881, and the granite forms the dam abutments themselves.
The lake sits at the upper end of Needles Highway (SD-87), a 14-mile scenic byway with narrow granite tunnels that limit large vehicles. A Custer State Park entrance licence is required, sold at the gate or online through South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks. The Sylvan Lake Lodge, the Sunday Gulch Trail, and the Black Elk Peak Trail #9 all begin within a short walk of the parking area. Swimming is allowed from the rock shoreline in summer; a small boat rental operates the lake from late May through September.
