Palo Duro Canyon Lighthouse Rock
— a tower the river forgot to take down.
Not only on a wall.
Palo Duro Canyon Lighthouse Rock, 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.
“The Lighthouse is a 310-foot hoodoo standing alone on the canyon floor of Palo Duro: a column of pale Trujillo sandstone capped by harder rock, the formation it once belonged to long since carried off by the river. The trail in and out runs about six miles. In summer you start before sunrise. In winter the red wall behind it glows for an hour at last light.
The place, in three passes.
The Lighthouse is a free-standing pillar of rock on the floor of Palo Duro Canyon, the official symbol of Palo Duro Canyon State Park and a designated Texas State Natural Landmark. It stands roughly 310 feet tall, a column of Trujillo sandstone capped by harder rock that has slowed the erosion stripping the surrounding formation away. The hoodoo sits in the middle of the canyon south of Amarillo, reached on foot by the Lighthouse Trail, a six-mile out-and-back from the Lighthouse trailhead off the canyon's main park road. It is the most photographed natural feature in the Texas panhandle.
The pillar is a textbook hoodoo: a hard caprock protecting softer rock beneath while the surroundings erode away. The base and shaft are pale Trujillo Formation sandstone; the cap is harder material from the formation above. Hoodoos form on a timescale of millions of years, and the same processes are still at work. Pieces of the Lighthouse have come down within recorded history. Standing at its base, the column reads as both monumental and provisional: the last surviving tooth of a much larger rim that used to extend across the part of the canyon you are looking at.
The Lighthouse Trail is roughly six miles round-trip with about 600 feet of elevation gain on the return climb. The route runs the canyon floor from the Lighthouse trailhead, mostly exposed with little shade. Texas Parks and Wildlife closes the trail to hikers when canyon-floor temperatures exceed 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which is typical by late morning June through September. Two to four liters of water per person is the standing recommendation. The view at the top is from a saddle below the column rather than the column itself; climbing the pillar is prohibited and unsafe.
