This appeal was effective and Congress appointed Prof. Lester F. Ward to visit the Petrified Forest and make a report. The report was favorable to preservation, and acting with his usual promptness, President Theodore Roosevelt issued the proclamation which created the Petrified Forest National Monument.
Photo by C. J. Smith
The surrounding country has washed away in the passing of years and leaves this mammoth cross section thirty feet or more above the plain.
This proclamation, in part, follows:
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A PROCLAMATION.
WHEREAS, it is provided by section two of the Act of Congress, approved June 8, 1906, entitled, “AN ACT FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES”, “THAT THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS HEREBY AUTHORIZED, IN HIS DISCRETION, TO DECLARE BY PUBLIC PROCLAMATION HISTORIC LANDMARKS, HISTORIC AND PREHISTORIC STRUCTURES, AND OTHER OBJECTS OF HISTORIC OR SCIENTIFIC INTEREST TO BE NATIONAL MONUMENTS * * *
And, whereas the mineralized remains of Mesozoic forests, commonly known as the “Petrified Forest”, in the Territory of Arizona, situated upon the public lands owned and controlled by the United States, are of the greatest scientific interest and value, and it appears that the public good would be promoted by reserving these deposits of fossilized wood as a national monument with as much land as may seem necessary for the proper protection thereof;
Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the power in me vested by section two of the aforesaid Act of Congress, do hereby set aside as the Petrified Forest National Monument * * *
Warning is hereby expressly given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, excavate, injure, or destroy any of the mineralized forest remains hereby declared to be a National Monument or to locate or settle upon any of the lands reserved and made a part of said Monument by this proclamation.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this 8th day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and six and the Independence of the United States the one hundred and thirty-first.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
In 1911, President Taft made a new proclamation reducing the extent of the Petrified Forest National Monument to its present size of 25,908 acres.
The Blue Forest
While the Blue Forest was included in the National Monument originally it is now several miles outside the present boundary. It is from this section that much of the wood used commercially is obtained. Many find this weird formation the most interesting spot in the entire country. Miles and more miles of blue-gray mounds, varying in size, formed of the crumbling marl have been beaten and blown into a semblance of numberless haystacks. It is arduous climbing to reach the top of this Blue Forest, but the view obtained is well worth the skinned knees and twisted ankles produced by rolling shale. From the highest elevation there is a view that beggars description. One cannot put into words his feeling of desolation, of helplessness, that comes in looking over the formation. Vanishing in the distance the mounds lie in rows that grow gradually smaller and smaller until they melt into the level landscape below. On the tops of these cold, blue mounds great trees lie prone, many of them shattered and cascading their jeweled hearts down the slope....
Here great piles of splintered, colorless wood are found, looking as if the chopper had just left the scene of his labors, the chips of his day’s work lying scattered about. Again, a big tree broken open by the frost, or other agencies, discloses a lining of gleaming crystals, glittering and sparkling in the Arizona sun. Here the great dinosaur lived and died, and from his tomb fossil bones have been carried to universities far and wide. Here the phytosaurus and the stegosaurus breathed their last, and from here was taken the wicked looking upper jaw of a phytosaurus which had weathered the ravages of time and elements. This lies in a glass case in the store at Headquarters, where all may see it and be thankful such creatures roam this region no longer.