Falcon Lake international reservoir
— one lake, two countries, one river under it.
Not only on a wall.
Falcon Lake international 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.
“Falcon Lake holds the Rio Grande between Texas and Tamaulipas, an eighty-thousand-acre reservoir that erased the old river towns of Zapata and Guerrero Viejo when the dam closed in 1954. Bass tournaments draw anglers from across the South; whitewing dove hunters work the brush in September. On the Mexico side, the bell tower of Guerrero Viejo still surfaces in drought years, the town that did not move.
The place, in three passes.
Falcon International Reservoir sits on the Rio Grande along the Texas–Mexico border, between Zapata County, Texas, and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The reservoir covers roughly 83,654 acres at the conservation pool elevation of 301.2 feet, and Falcon Dam was completed in 1954 as a joint project of the International Boundary and Water Commission. The lake supplies irrigation water to the Lower Rio Grande Valley and supports a binational fishery managed under treaty.
Falcon's water is the Rio Grande, held back by a five-mile earthen and concrete dam below the confluence with the Salado. Conservation pool sits at 301.2 feet; drought-stage drawdowns through the 2010s and 2020s have at times dropped the surface below 280 feet, exposing the church tower and walls of Guerrero Viejo, a Tamaulipas town inundated when the dam closed. The reservoir's largemouth bass fishery is among the most cited in North America.
Falcon State Park on the Texas side, near the village of Falcon Heights, has campsites, a boat ramp, and shoreline access at the reservoir's southeastern arm. The park is roughly forty miles south of Zapata on US-83. Bass season is the local economy; tournament weeks fill the lodges for miles. The Mexican side is reached through the Falcon Dam port of entry, which keeps shorter hours than the larger crossings upriver at Laredo.
