Cover: Petrified Logs in the Rainbow Forest.
Petrified Forest
NATIONAL MONUMENT · ARIZONA
PETRIFIED WOOD MAY NOT BE REMOVED FROM THE MONUMENT
The National Park System, of which Petrified Forest National Monument is a unit, is dedicated to the conservation of America’s scenic, scientific, and historic heritage for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.
Petrified Forest National Monument, containing 85,304 acres of federally owned land, has the greatest and most colorful concentration of petrified wood known in the world. In the monument are six separate “forests” where giant logs of agatized wood lie prostrate, surrounded by numerous broken sections and smaller chips and fragments.
The area is a part of the Painted Desert of northern Arizona, a region of banded rocks of many hues carved by wind and rain into a fantastic landscape. Here and there beds of shale contain perfectly preserved fossil leaves of plants of a remote age. Occasionally the bones of giant reptiles and amphibians are washed from their burial places in the deposits.
PREHISTORIC INDIANS LIVED IN PETRIFIED FOREST
The ruins of pueblos built by Indians in pre-Columbian times, from 800 to 1,400 years ago, are scattered on nearly every mesa throughout the monument. Low mounds, strewn with blocks of sandstone and bits of broken pottery, mark the sites of these ancient homes. Some of the dwellings, such as the Agate House in the Third Forest, were built of blocks of petrified wood, and smaller fragments of this material were chipped into arrowheads, knives, and scrapers. Many petroglyphs (pictures carved into the surface of the rock) are found on the sandstone rocks throughout the area.