McKinney Falls State Park lower falls
— limestone the creek has been polishing for a long time.
Not only on a wall.
McKinney Falls State Park lower falls, 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.
“Onion Creek drops a few feet over a slab of Edwards limestone into a flat shallow pool. On a warm Saturday, families wade across the rock, dogs in tow, while bald cypress arch overhead. The park sits twenty minutes from downtown Austin and feels much farther. After a dry stretch the water runs clear, and the white rock takes the heat.
The place, in three passes.
McKinney Falls State Park covers 744 acres along Onion Creek in southeast Austin, about nine miles from the Texas Capitol. The lower falls drop roughly eight feet over an exposed shelf of Edwards limestone before the creek bends toward its confluence with the Colorado River. The land was deeded to the state in 1970 by descendants of Thomas F. McKinney, a 19th-century rancher and one of Austin's early settlers, and opened as a park in 1976. Texas Parks and Wildlife manages the site, with year-round day use and a small campground.
Onion Creek drains roughly 350 square miles of the Edwards Plateau before passing through the park, which makes the falls behave by the rhythm of Hill Country rain. After a wet spring, the lower cascade runs wide and brown. In late summer the flow narrows to a thread, and the creek pools clear over white rock. Swimming is allowed below the falls when water quality permits; the park closes the swim area after heavy rain, when bacteria counts rise upstream.
The park entrance is on McKinney Falls Parkway, off U.S. 183 in southeast Austin. Day-use admission runs a few dollars per adult, and reservations are advised on summer weekends, when the lots fill by mid-morning. The lower falls sit about a quarter mile from the main lot along a paved trail. The Old Baylor Cypress, a bald cypress thought to be over 500 years old, stands near the upper falls a short walk upstream.
