Breaks Interstate Park canyon
— the gorge the river spent a million years cutting.
Not only on a wall.
Breaks Interstate Park canyon, 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 Russell Fork bends hard around the Towers and drops into a sandstone canyon five miles long and a thousand feet deep. Locals call it the Grand Canyon of the South. In October the rim turns rust and gold and the water runs loud below. The overlooks above Clinchfield carry the sound up the wall.
The place, in three passes.
Breaks Interstate Park is one of only two interstate parks in the United States, shared by Virginia and Kentucky and run by a four-member commission since 1954. The Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River has cut a sandstone canyon roughly five miles long and 1,650 feet deep along the spine of Pine Mountain. The park sits in Dickenson County, Virginia and Pike County, Kentucky, about an hour east of Pikeville, and is reached by State Route 80.
The canyon walls are Pennsylvanian-age sandstones and shales of the Lee Formation, the same hard cap rock that armors Pine Mountain for 125 miles across the Cumberland Plateau. Erosion-resistant sandstone left the Towers, a stair-stepped pyramid of rock that splits the river into a horseshoe bend. Below the rim, softer shales weather back faster, undercutting the cliffs and leaving the bare orange faces visible from Stateline and Clinchfield Overlooks.
Mid-October through early November is when the canyon gives the most: oak, hickory, and maple turning along the rim while the gorge holds shadow. Whitewater releases on the Russell Fork from Flannagan Dam come the first four weekends of October, drawing kayakers to Class IV–V rapids. Winter strips the trees and shows the rock; summer hides the river under a green ceiling. The park stays open year-round, though the lodge restaurant closes mid-week off-season.
