Petrified Forest National Park

Over 600,000 tourists visit the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona every year. They find the amazing sight of trees that lived long ago turned to stone.

 

Not a normal forest

When we think of a forest, we usually think of a variety of tall trees growing close together. Trees in the Petrified Forest lay on the ground, often in clumps.

The trees lived long ago beside a river. After the trees died and toppled over, the flooded river took them downstream where mud buried them. Over time the wood became stone, mostly quartz.

Rainbow Forest

Most petrified wood is brown or black. The Rainbow Forest, one of the six forests in the park, contains pink, orange, or red petrified wood. Tourists may find almost every color of the rainbow.

Rock Shops

Though the national park protects all petrified wood inside, a rock shop sells chunks of rock from privately-owned property. The color patterns on every rock are different.

Images carved into stone

There is a trail at Puerco Pueblo, an archeological site, where visitors fine images carved into stone, called petroglyphs.

Newspaper Rock has over 650 petroglyths that can be seen below an overlook.

Park’s longest logs

The longest log is in the park is 141 feet and the second longest is 137 feet. When living, both these trees might have been about 200 feet.

Wildlife at the park

While in the park, watch for coyotes, jackrabbits, prairie dogs, and bobcats. Pronghorns, the fastest animal in the United States, also live there.

 

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources:

Jensen, Paul. National Parks: A Guide to the National Parks and Monuments of the United States, Golden Press, 1964.

McHugh, Erin. National Parks: A Kid’s Guide to America’s Parks, Monuments, and Landmarks, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2012.

“Petrified Forest,” National Park Service, 2016/01/28 http://www.nps.gov/pefo/index.htm.

Tilden, Freeman. The National Parks, Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.