Frozen Head State Park
— the ridge where the Barkley runners disappear.
Not only on a wall.
Frozen Head 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.
“Frozen Head holds the high ground of the Cumberlands above Wartburg. The summit clears 3,300 feet and gets its name from the rime ice that sits on it through winter. Most of the year it's a quiet hardwood-forest park. One weekend in spring it's the start line of the Barkley Marathons. The trees keep both versions to themselves. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Frozen Head State Park and Natural Area covers roughly 24,000 acres of the Cumberland Mountains in Morgan County, Tennessee, near the town of Wartburg. The park is named for Frozen Head Mountain, which rises to 3,324 feet, one of the highest summits in the Cumberlands. The land is mixed mesophytic hardwood forest with deep coves, headwater streams, and old surface-mine reclamation tracts along the perimeter. The park has more than 50 miles of backcountry trail, a developed campground, and a network of fire roads that lead toward the summit lookout tower.
Frozen Head is one of the quieter parks in the Tennessee system. The road in dead-ends at the Flat Fork area, and the rest of the park is reached on foot. The summit ridge is the high point of an otherwise low-relief stretch of plateau country and holds rime ice well into March, which is what gave the mountain its name. The park is also the venue of the Barkley Marathons, an invitation-only ultramarathon held each spring that traverses roughly 100 miles of off-trail terrain across the ridges.
Frozen Head is reached from Wartburg, off State Route 62 about an hour west of Knoxville. The Flat Fork visitor area has a small ranger station, picnic area, and the trailhead network. The walk to the Frozen Head summit lookout tower runs about 7 miles round trip on the South Old Mac and Lookout Tower trails, with steady climbs through hardwood cove forest. The park is open year-round; spring wildflower bloom in April is the best-known season, with bloodroot, trillium, and lady's slipper along the Flat Fork drainage.
