Cover: Petrified Logs in the Rainbow Forest.
Petrified Forest
NATIONAL MONUMENT · ARIZONA
PETRIFIED WOOD MAY NOT BE REMOVED FROM THE MONUMENT
The National Park System, of which Petrified Forest NationalMonument is a unit, is dedicated to the conservation of America’sscenic, scientific, and historic heritage for the benefit and enjoymentof the people.
Petrified Forest National Monument, containing85,304 acres of federally owned land, hasthe greatest and most colorful concentration ofpetrified wood known in the world. In themonument are six separate “forests” wheregiant logs of agatized wood lie prostrate, surroundedby numerous broken sections andsmaller chips and fragments.
The area is a part of the Painted Desert ofnorthern Arizona, a region of banded rocks ofmany hues carved by wind and rain into a fantasticlandscape. Here and there beds of shalecontain perfectly preserved fossil leaves ofplants of a remote age. Occasionally the bonesof giant reptiles and amphibians are washedfrom their burial places in the deposits.
PREHISTORIC INDIANS LIVED IN PETRIFIED FOREST
The ruins of pueblos built by Indians in pre-Columbiantimes, from 800 to 1,400 years ago,are scattered on nearly every mesa throughoutthe monument. Low mounds, strewn withblocks of sandstone and bits of broken pottery,mark the sites of these ancient homes. Some ofthe dwellings, such as the Agate House in theThird Forest, were built of blocks of petrifiedwood, and smaller fragments of this materialwere chipped into arrowheads, knives, andscrapers. Many petroglyphs (pictures carvedinto the surface of the rock) are found on thesandstone rocks throughout the area.
HISTORY
Apparently the first man to report the “stonetrees” was Lieutenant Sitgreaves, an Army officerwho explored parts of northern Arizona in1851, soon after Arizona was acquired by theUnited States.
The petrified forests remained largely unknown,however, until the settlement of northernArizona began in 1878 and the Atlantic andPacific, now the Santa Fe Railway, was completedacross northern Arizona in 1883. Duringthe following years, the existence of the petrifiedforests was threatened by souvenir hunters,gem collectors, commercial jewelers, and abrasivemanufacturers. Entire logs were blasted toobtain the quartz and amethyst crystals oftenfound within the logs, and much agate was carriedaway for making jewelry. The erection of astamp mill near the forests to crush the petrifiedlogs into abrasives offered the most seriousthreat. Alarmed, the citizens of Arizona,through their territorial legislature, petitionedCongress to make the area a national reserve2“so that future generations might enjoy itsbeauties, and study one of the most curiousresults of nature’s forces.”
Following an investigation by Lester F. Ward,of the United States Geological Survey, PetrifiedForest National Monument was establishedby President Theodore Roosevelt on December8, 1906, under authority of the Act for the Preservationof American Antiquities.