Petrified Forest NP
Written: Sep 02 '01
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Pros: Largest petrified forest open to the public in the world
Cons: You can't take a piece with you
The Bottom Line: If you're passing through it's definitely worth it. The whole tour can be done in an hour.
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| rasiel's Full Review: Petrified Forest National Park |
This park is one of the most accessible national parks in the country. Accessible, that is, if you live or are visiting Arizona. I40 literally bisects it at about 1 hr.'s drive east of flagstaff or a little less coming from Gallup, NM.
Petrified NP is one of the most watched over parks as well. Being stone or not the logs are fragile and souvenir hunters are depleting them little by little every year. For this reason they have security posts at both entrances where the park rangers retain the right to search you for lifted samples. While they waived us through this is at their discretion and so help you god if they bust you with any chips! You're also not allowed to wander off the railed trails though for taking photographs they may let you after lecturing you on being careful.
The free brochure you get at the entrance explains how these trees turned to stone. It seems a cataclysmic event of some sort, probably a major flood, felled the prehistoric trees and then soon after a second cataclysmic event covered these freshly fallen trees with sediment. It could've been a landslide or volcanic ash. In any case, as the trees slowly decayed minerals from the covering layer leached in to fill in the tiny intracellular cellulose pockets. Over a period of centuries all the woody matter of the trees was gone leaving behind three-dimensional casts of the trees. At some point much later on yet another weather phenomenon struck the area and washed away the covering silt leaving behind the tree casts. Over time they cracked under the stress of minor earthquakes and ground subsidence. That's why all the remains are broken up into chunks and not as whole tree trunks.
The detail on some of these fossilized trees is nothing short of spectacular. They really look like ordinary logs complete with different shades of color for the bark and internal growth rings.
Here's a picture I took of the area at "Crystal Forest" which is where the largest concentration of remaining logs are found:
http://rasiel.com/wallpaper/800/petrifiedforest.jpg
If you have any remaining questions just drop me an email.
Ras
rasiel@rasiel.com
Recommended:
Yes
Best time to go: Anytime
Recommended for: Anybody
Review Topic: Overview
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Epinions.com ID:
rasiel
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Location: Minneapolis, MN USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 0 members
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