FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON
1928

88781°—28——2

THE NATIONAL PARKS AT A GLANCE.
[Number, 19; total area, 11,817 square miles.]
National parks in order of creation.	Location.	Area in square miles.	Distinctive characteristics.
Hot Springs 1832	Middle Arkansas.	1½	46 hot springs possessing curative properties—Many hotels and boarding houses—20 bath-houses under public control.
Yellowstone 1872	Northwestern Wyoming.	3,348	More geysers than in all rest of world together—Boiling springs—Mud volcanoes—Petrified forests—Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, remarkable for gorgeous coloring—Large lakes—Many large streams and waterfalls—Vast wilderness, greatest wild bird and animal preserve in world—Exceptional trout fishing.
Sequoia 1890	Middle eastern California.	604	The Big Tree National Park—Scores of sequoia trees 20 to 30 feet in diameter, thousands over 10 feet in diameter—Towering mountain ranges—Mount Whitney, highest peak in continental United States—Startling precipices—Cave of considerable size.
Yosemite 1890	Middle eastern California.	1,125	Valley of world-famed beauty—Lofty cliffs—Romantic vistas—Many waterfalls of extraordinary height—3 groves of big trees—High Sierra—Waterwheel falls—Good trout fishing.
General Grant 1890	Middle eastern California.	4	Created to preserve the celebrated General Grant Tree, 35 feet in diameter—6 miles from Sequoia National Park.
Mount Rainier 1890	West central Washington.	325	Largest accessible single peak glacier system—28 glaciers, some of large size—48 square miles of glacier, 50 to 500 feet thick—Wonderful sub-alpine wild-flower fields.
Crater Lake 1902	Southwestern Oregon.	249	Lake of extraordinary blue in crater of extinct volcano—Sides 1,000 feet high—Interesting lava formations—Fine fishing.
Wind Cave 1903	South Dakota.	17	Cavern having many miles of galleries and numerous chambers containing peculiar formations.
Platt 1901	Southern Oklahoma.	1⅓	Many sulphur and other springs possessing medicinal value.
Sullys Hill 1904	North Dakota.	1⅕	Small park with woods, streams, and a lake—Is an important wild-animal preserve.
Mesa Verde 1906	Southwestern Colorado.	77	Most notable and best preserved prehistoric cliff dwellings in United States, if not in the world.
Glacier 1910	Northwestern Montana.	1,534	Rugged mountain region of unsurpassed Alpine character—250 glacier-fed lakes of romantic beauty—60 small glaciers—Precipices thousands of feet deep—Almost sensational scenery of marked individuality—Fine trout fishing.
Rocky Mountain 1915	North middle Colorado.	378	Heart of the Rockies—Snowy range, peaks 11,000 to 14,250 feet altitude—Remarkable records of glacial period.
Hawaii 1916	Hawaii.	242	Three separate areas—Kilauea and Mauna Loa on Hawaii, Haleakala on Maui.
Lassen Volcanic 1916	Northern California.	124	Only active volcano in United States proper—Lassen Peak, 10,465 feet—Cinder Cone, 6,879 feet—Hot springs—Mud geysers.
Mount McKinley 1917	South central Alaska.	2,645	Highest mountain in North America—Rises higher above surrounding country than any other mountain in the world.
Grand Canyon 1919	North central Arizona.	1,009	The greatest example of erosion and the most sublime spectacle in the world.
Lafayette 1919	Maine coast.	12	The group of granite mountains upon Mount Desert Island.
Zion 1919	Southwestern Utah.	120	Magnificent gorge (Zion Canyon), depth from 1,500 to 2,500 feet, with precipitous walls—Of great beauty and scenic interest.

THE FOSSIL FORESTS OF THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.

By F. H. Knowlton,
United States Geological Survey.

INTRODUCTION.

Isolated pieces of fossil wood are of comparatively common and widespread occurrence, especially in the more recent geological deposits of the West. Not infrequently scattered logs, stumps, and roots of petrified or lignitized trees are brought to light, but only exceptionally are they so massed and aggregated as to be worthy of the designation of fossil forests. Examples of such are the celebrated fossil forests of relatively late geological age near Cairo, Egypt, the huge prostrate trunks in the Napa Valley near Calistoga, Cal., and the geologically much older and far more extensive forests now widely known as the Petrified Forest National Monument in Apache County, Ariz. But in many respects the most remarkable fossil forests known are those now to be described in the Yellowstone National Park. In the forests first mentioned the trunks and logs were all prostrated before fossilization, and it is perhaps not quite correct to designate such aggregations as veritable fossil forests, though they usually are so called. In the fossil forests of Arizona, for example, which are scattered over many square miles of what is now almost desert, all the trunks show evidence of having been transported from a distance before they were turned to stone. Most of them are not even in the position in which they were originally entombed, but have been eroded from slightly higher horizons and have rolled in the greatest profusion to lower levels. As one views these Arizona forests from a little distance, with their hundreds, even thousands, of segments of logs, it is difficult to realize that they are really turned to stone and are now exhumed from the earth. The appearance they present (see [fig. 1]) is not unlike a “log drive” that has been stranded by the receding waters and left until the bark had disappeared and many logs had fallen into partial decay. Trunks of many sizes and lengths are now mingled and scattered about in the wildest profusion, and the surface of the ground is carpeted with fragments of wood that have been splintered and broken from them. In the Yellowstone National Park, however, most of the trees were entombed in the upright position in which they grew, by the outpouring of various volcanic materials, and as the softer rock surrounding them is gradually worn away they are left standing erect on the steep hillsides, just as they stood when they were living: in fact, it is difficult at a little distance to distinguish some of these fossil trunks from the lichen-covered stumps of kindred living species. Such an aggregation of fossil trunks is therefore well entitled to be called a true fossil forest. It should not be supposed, however, that these trees still retain their limbs and smaller branches, for the mass of volcanic material falling on them stripped them down to bare, upright trunks.