Joe Wheeler State Park
— the river the dam slowed into a lake.
Not only on a wall.
Joe Wheeler 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.
“Joe Wheeler State Park sits where the Tennessee River broadens into Wheeler Lake, the reservoir TVA finished in 1936 just upstream of Muscle Shoals. The park covers about 2,550 acres of hickory and oak on the north bank, with a lodge above the water and a marina tucked into a quiet cove. The lake holds bass, crappie, and the largest wintering bald eagle population in the state. Mornings the fog lifts off the inlets the way it does on slow river-fed lakes. The lodge keeps a light on after the last boat comes in. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Joe Wheeler State Park covers about 2,550 acres on the Tennessee River in Lauderdale County, Alabama, near the town of Rogersville. The park is named for Joseph Wheeler, the Confederate cavalry general and later U.S. Congressman whose Lawrence County home is preserved as a separate state historic site. The river here is impounded into Wheeler Lake by Wheeler Dam, a TVA project completed in 1936 about 15 miles downstream near Muscle Shoals. Although the park lies inside Alabama, the Tennessee River system is the geographic and cultural through-line; the reservoir takes its outflow from the Tennessee Valley and feeds the Pickwick pool below it. The park is operated by the Alabama State Parks system.
Wheeler Lake holds about 67,100 surface acres at full pool, making it the second-largest reservoir on the Tennessee River. TVA completed the dam in 1936 as part of the New Deal river-control program; the impoundment slowed a section of river that had been broken by shoals and rapids for most of recorded time. The lake fishery is bass-dominated — largemouth, smallmouth, and spotted bass — with strong crappie runs through the spring. The adjoining Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1938 just downriver, hosts the largest wintering population of bald eagles in Alabama, with peak counts above 100 birds in January.
The park is open year-round, with a 75-room lodge above the water, a campground with about 116 sites, and a marina with rental slips and a small launch ramp. Day-use admission is around $5 per adult. Trails on the upland include a 4-mile loop through bottomland hickory and a shorter spur to a sandstone overlook of the lake. The park is 30 miles east of Florence and about 40 miles west of Huntsville, the nearest commercial airport. Spring crappie and winter eagle-watching draw the heaviest weekend crowds; midweek the lodge porch is often empty after breakfast.
