The wide-open scenery of Petrified Forest National Park / Rebecca Latson
Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is chock full of geology, color, and history. So here are a few fun facts about this national park about which you might or might not know.
Sometimes Petrified Forest is called high desert, but the main environment of this national park is Intermountain Basin semi-arid steppe and grassland (shortgrass prairie). This basically means that, while it’s not desert, it is dry with lower-elevation grasslands, most of which you will see in the southern third portion of the park.
The petroglyphs of Newspaper Rock were created by ancestral Puebloan people living, farming, and hunting along the Puerco River between 650 and 2,000 years ago, Petrified Forest National Park / Rebecca Latson
Over 13,000 years of history, including 800 archeological and historic sites, may be found within the park’s boundaries, including as the well-known Newspaper Rock and Agate House.
If you looked across the Painted Desert in the mid-1800s, you might have seen a camel caravan crossing the landscape. Between 1857 – 1860, E.F. Beale, hired by the U.S. Government as a civilian contractor, made several camel caravan trips from his home in California over to what is now Petrified Forest National Park, to promote camels’ value at transporting goods.
Petrified wood found in the park is the result of trees dying and being buried beneath sediment and volcanic ash to create an oxygen-free environment perfect for preserving the logs. Over the millennia, the wood organics were replaced by mostly silica (quartz) that maintained the cellular structure of the downed and buried trees.
The bright colors created by trace minerals in a petrified log, Petrified Forest National Park / Rebecca Latson
The bright, saturated colors you see in petrified logs come from trace minerals like quartz (white), manganese oxides (blue, purple, black, brown), and iron oxides (yellow, red, orange).
Sections of petrified logs seen along the Crystal Forest Trail, Petrified Forest National Park / Rebecca Latson
No, these petrified logs were not sawn, even though they sure look like they were. To cut a petrified log would require a diamond rock saw and take quite a bit of time to slice. This is because quartz (of which a petrified log primarily consists) is very hard (7 out of 10 on the Moh’s Hardness Scale). These broken logs look like they were sawn because quartz is a brittle mineral subject to breaking at a clean angle, and the weight and pressure of overlying strata cracked the petrified logs, while subsequent erosion and ice wedging then broke the logs clean off from the main trunk.
Nearly a dozen types of trees have been found petrified in this national park, including coniferous trees, tree ferns, and some ginkgoes.
The age of some of these petrified trees date as far back as 218 million years, when the landscape was much wetter, with rivers and swamps allowing for the growth of so many different tree species.
You might even see a salamander at Petrified Forest National Park / NPS file
While you may not think there is much wildlife in this park, you might spot ravens, elk, black-tailed jackrabbit, coyotes, bats, and even a variety of salamanders. Most wildlife will appear during the cooler parts of the day (early morning, late evening, night time).
Tents at Devils Playground under a night sky, Petrified Forest National Park / NPS - Jacob Holgerson
There are no front country campgrounds at Petrified Forest National Park, but walk at least a mile from the trail and you can pitch your tent beneath a starry sky. You’ll need a permit for backcountry camping.
Speaking of viewing the starry sky, Petrified Forest is an International Dark Sky Park. The park closes its gates at a certain time of day, but if you want to view and photograph the night sky from within the park boundaries, you can get a free Dark Sky Viewing Permit.
No longer open for business as lodging, the Painted Desert Inn is now a National Historic Landmark, Petrified Forest National Park / Rebecca Latson
Painted Desert Inn was originally called “Stone Tree House” and was built in 1924 by Herbert Lore to live in and thus satisfy the requirements of the Homestead Act. No, you cannot lay your head to rest for a night at the Painted Desert Inn nowadays. It stopped renting out rooms in 1963. You can wander through it to see the interior, painted murals, and even get something tasty at the ice cream parlor during the summer.
This line of telephone poles marks the road bed of Route 66 through Petrified Forest National Park / NPS file
Petrified Forest National Park is the only national park site that contains a segment of the Historic Route 66. Established in 1926, this road ran 2,200 miles (3,541 km) from Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles, California, earning a place not only in history, but in pop culture, as well.
In 2023, there were 520,491 recreation visits to Petrified Forest National Park, up 136,000 from 2020’s visitation numbers of 384,483 during the COVID pandemic year of 2020.
