The Lone Cypress

Date: 12/2003
Location: Inside Main Entrance, California Adventure
Comments: For those not familar with California, this section of mosaic found at the entrance to California Adventure, features the Lone Cypress on Carmel's famed 17 Mile Drive. Often mistaken as the Monterey Cypress, this tree is one of the landmarks found on the Monterey Peninsula, just down the road from the famed Pebble Beach Golf Course and historic Cannery Row. The mosaic is also adorned with a native California Sea Otter.

Piecing California Together (from The Great California Adventure, Imagineering Disney's California Adventure & The Disneyland Resort; 2001)

"Containing more than 12,000 pieces of hand-crafted tiles, the entry wall - a "Postcard from California" - captures the images of numerous California icons including LAX, Catalina Island, the redwoods, and San Francisco's Lombard Street and Chinatown. Each tile was cut from clay, baked, hand-painted and glazed (this includes using 14-carat gold paint). According to vice president, executive designer Tim Delaney, the Bulgarian couple who made the 12,000 tiles numbered and lettered each one so they could be put together by Imagineers on site.

"When the english letters ran out there was some type of bulgarian coding," says Tim. "We started to panic because if anything happened to those two people we would be lost in a sea of tile big enough to fill a football field."

Thankfully, the jig saw puzzle of tile was completed and has carved its place as of of the largest hand-crafted tile murals in the world."