Colorful petrified logs along the Crystal Forest Loop Trail, Petrified Forest National Park / Rebecca Latson

It’s easy to spend just an hour driving the 28-mile (40-kilometer) road through Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, stopping at the view areas then heading back onto Interstate 40. It’s a nice little break and stretch of the legs, actually. You’ll see a colorful painted desert, vast landscape, and brilliantly-saturated logs of petrified wood that look like someone took an axe to the ancient tree trunks to get those regularly-cut segments. But you really should stay a little longer, hike a trail or two, tour the historic Painted Desert Inn, and learn about the geology, paleontology, and history of this colorful national park.

Looking out toward this vast terrain of crumbly purple, blue, and buff striped hills and mesas sprinkled with colorful fossilized tree trunks like so much birthday confetti, and a semi-arid desert atmosphere easily comes to mind. It’s hard to think this 93,532-acre (37,851-hectare) landscape was once steamy, lush, and wet. Park Service geologists tell us the region was a vast basin with numerous rivers and streams flowing through the lowland, rich with nine-foot-diameter coniferous trees towering almost 200 feet (61 meters) into the sky. Trees, ferns, and giant horsetails grew abundantly along the waterway, providing food and shelter for many insects, reptiles, amphibians, and other creatures. Cycads, bennettitaleans (an extinct type of seed plant), ginkgoes, and coniferous trees grew in the slightly dryer areas a short distance from the water.

Killed by insects, undercut by water, or knocked over by wind, these trees fell into the waterways, and were either carried downstream to be buried within stream channels or dropped off along the riverbanks and ultimately buried by windblown volcanic ash mixed with other sediments. Some trees decomposed, but others buried quickly enough to prevent decomposition had their internal cell structure replaced by dissolved silica. Manganese dioxides and iron oxides painted these permineralized trees with the bright reds, oranges, yellows, purples, and blacks we see coloring these fossil logs today.

Fun fact: These regularly-segmented fossil tree trunks were not sawn by park rangers. Because the sections are still in order, we know that the logs fractured after they were buried and the petrification process was complete. Composed of quartz, petrified logs are hard and brittle, breaking easily when subjected to stress. Softer sedimentary layers surround the hard logs. As the sedimentary layers shifted and settled, stress on the rigid logs caused fractures. Some researchers believe that such stress may have been produced by earthquakes or the gradual uplifting of the Colorado Plateau.

What else can a visitor to this national park do, in addition to stopping at all 22 view areas along the park road? Petrified Forest National Park is one huge photo op, so bring your camera with you for a day of amazing photography. You can capture great shots while out hiking the colorfully-descriptive Crystal Forest or Blue Mesa trails. Granted, this national park is not exactly a long-distance hiker’s park, but there are several short, maintained trails in addition to the two previously-mentioned hikes, plus there is off-trail backpacking throughout most of the park, with the exception of some areas closed due to safety concerns and protection of fragile resources.

Horseback riders can enjoy Painted Desert Wilderness access trail near Kachina Point, on the northwest side of Painted Desert Inn. Scheduled for spring 2025 are several ranger-led hikes to petroglyph sites around the park. If you are interested in a real-world treasure hunt, the park offers geocaching adventures where players locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and share their experiences.

While there is no lodging or frontcountry camping within the park (Painted Desert Inn is now a museum open to the public), you can obtain a free wilderness permit and take off into the designated Petrified Forest National Wilderness Area to spend a night beneath the starry sky in the park, as long as you are at least a half mile from your vehicle. The nearby town of Holbrook offers some hotel/motel lodging and there are private campgrounds throughout Navajo and Apache Counties, in and around Holbrook, Sun Valley, St. Johns, Joseph City, and other communities.

Petrified Forest National Park is open year-round, except Thanksgiving and Christmas, usually from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Mountain Standard), although hours are subject to change depending upon staffing.

Traveler’s Choice For: Geology, photography, families