As we continue to seek out social distance friendly destinations the wide open spaces of Arizona offer an intriguing option… ancient, petrified trees!
Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is definitely a drive-through park.
The road stretches twenty-seven miles north-to-south through the forest with numerous pullouts and side roads for viewing the sights.
Calling it a forest gave us the wrong impression. The petrified trees are all laying on the ground, left there about 225 million years ago during the Late Triassic period.
When we heard forest, we expected large groups of upright trees. We felt kind of dumb.
All those million years ago this area was an upright tropical forest. Fallen trees accumulated in river beds and were buried by volcanic ash.
The silica in the ash dissolved and seeped into the logs, forming beautiful quartz crystals.
Other minerals combined with the silica to create the rainbow of colors in the petrified wood.
Buried for eons, it wasn’t until about sixty million years ago that the Colorado Plateau began to be pushed up, forming mountains and allowing erosion to expose this ancient lumber.
Wondering what else there is to do in the area around The Petrified Forest?
At our first stop, The Crystal Forest, a walking trail led us through hundreds of downed ancient trees, giving us our first up close look at the petrified wood.
It’s amazing how the rock has retained the exact look of the trees. The grain, rings and even the bark are perfectly preserved in stone.
Our next pull off was Blue Mesa. From the top of the mesa we got a great view of valleys filled with petrified logs.
Many of them have rolled down and gathered in the canyons, while others are still being exposed by erosion that continues today.
Wondering what else there is to do in the area around The Petrified Forest?
As we continued north, we crossed I-40 and the Route 66 marker. When the old highway came through here back in the twenties, tourists began discovering this unique fossilized collection.
Unfortunately, they also began removing a lot of the specimens. The area was preserved as a national monument by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, but it wasn’t until the depression that Civilian Conservation Corps workers built infrastructure for the park and began to really protect it.
In 1962, the monument became Petrified Forest National Park.
Still, even with fines as high as $325,000.00 an estimated twelve tons of artifacts disappear from the park each year.
David & Veronica, GypsyNester.com
After having Lived in Az.
have to Admit even tho I Heard -Wonderful-com
-ments about the “Forest”
I didn’t take the time to go
“SEE” for Myself before I moved back to Texas! I WILL make this a Priority to Stop and say Hello!!
This looks beautiful! How did I not know about this and was a resident of Arizona for six years?!
It is kind of in the middle of nowhere up in the north east part of the state.
Wow! This is incredibly awesome!
The Petrified Forest is an amazing place — haven’t been since I was a kid, but I was fascinated by it even then. You captured some great pics of the Seems almost magical how the trees can turn into such beautiful crystal.
Thanks Cathy. It is amazing.
What a trip!
It looks beautiful! Randy and I are planning a road trip in April (hopefully, since Randy had a double lung transplant in September!) and we are headed through AZ. We’ll check it out!
Definitely worth a stop. Hope Randy is doing well.