Colorado National MonumentNational Park Hat
Details
- Embroidered panoramic design
- Adjustable snapback hat
- Structured mid-profile 5 panel
- Cotton, handwash
- Free shipping, free returns
- 100% of profits donated to National Parks
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Our Mission
I'm Ian - from Seattle, and at Rainier Hat Co. we're dedicated to giving back to the places that inspire us every day. From the glaciers of Mount Rainier to the grand prismatic springs of Yellowstone, our national parks are treasures that deserve our support.
That's why we've made a commitment that goes beyond the norm: donating all our profits to these natural sanctuaries. It's not just about creating high-quality (and awesome) hats inspired by the beauty of the outdoors, it's about contributing to the preservation of these areas for future generations to enjoy.
Design Inspiration
This design was inspired by a midday vantage point on the rim between Monument Canyon and Wedding Canyon, where the Colorado Plateau's geology lays out in full. Independence Monument rises roughly 450 feet from the canyon floor below you, a freestanding monolith of dark red Wingate Sandstone capped with a narrow crown of more resistant rock. From this rim you can trace the layered record of the plateau across the canyon walls where crossbedded sandstone gives way to harder caprock and the terrain drops away in steps of color and texture.
The Book Cliffs hold the horizon to the north and Grand Mesa fills the northeast sky, its flat top marking the edge of a vast lava capped highland above the valley. In the foreground purple penstemon grows out of the shallow rocky soil, its tubular flowers drawing hummingbirds in from the scrubby expanse of sagebrush. A Utah juniper anchors the left side of the view, its shredding bark and gnarled form typical of the high desert at this elevation. Off to the right a ewe and her lamb graze among the sage, pausing occasionally to scan the canyon walls, unhurried in the midday heat radiating up from the sandstone below.
Design Process
Creating these National Park hats with their panoramic embroidery is a detailed process going beyond simply buying and reselling bulk designs.
The first step is a deep dive into what makes each park unique. From the Bison of Yellowstone and the Roseated Spoonbills of the Everglades to the panoramic views of Angels Landing in Zion, our goal is to highlight the beauty of each park. We try to find a specific viewpoint in the park to show off and what we need to do to capture the feeling of being there. While sometimes we ad-lib a bit of the design to include other elements to capture the feeling of the park as a whole, we try hard to find an actual place in the park you can visit even giving you an exact Google maps QR code with every hat.
Then we get to designing! Embroidery is naturally limited in colors and we use a 15 color (the most you'll find) edgeless embroidery process which takes upwards of 90 minutes and over 60,000 stitches per hat, but allows us to show off every detail from that epic mountain range to the colorful flowers in your favorite park.
Finally the design get digitized for embroidery, a sample is made for any final tweaks, and we go to production getting these fantastic hats on your heads.
And 100% of our profits are donated right back to our National Parks .
Visit the Inspiration
Colorado National Monument sits just west of Grand Junction, Colorado and is accessible from two entrances: the east entrance off Colorado Route 340 near Fruita and the west entrance off Monument Road. Rim Rock Drive connects both entrances and runs the full length of the monument, passing the major overlooks along the way.
The vantage point in this design sits on the rim between Monument Canyon and Wedding Canyon. Both the Monument Canyon Overlook and the Wedding Canyon Overlook are reachable directly from Rim Rock Drive and look out over Independence Monument rising from the canyon floor roughly 450 feet below.
If you want to get down to the canyon floor the Monument Canyon Trail drops from the rim trailhead off Rim Rock Drive and passes the base of Independence Monument on its way to the lower Fruita trailhead. The full trail runs about 6 miles one way so many hikers go partway down and return or arrange a car shuttle between the two trailheads.
Bighorn sheep move through the monument regularly, particularly in and around Monument Canyon and the surrounding sage flats. Morning and late afternoon offer the best odds of spotting them before the midday heat pushes them into shadier terrain.
The monument is open year round and a standard entrance fee applies. Summer midday temperatures on the canyon floor can get intense with heat radiating off the sandstone so an early start makes a real difference on the longer trails.
