We have passed by Petrified Forest National Park several times while traveling through Arizona on I-40, but haven’t taken the time to see it. When we cancelled our mid-March stop in Durango (due to weather), we decided to stop at “Petrified” instead. This was a good move as the park is much more than some petrified wood chunks. It is also about the Painted Desert, extinct creature excavations, as well as ancient American Indian artifacts and ruins. The terrain is beautiful and diverse. It varies from desert to grasslands to colorful badlands.
How it ended up in looking like this, and located where it is, is quite interesting. The petrified trees lived about 220 million years ago when the land mass was physically located near the equator. As trees fell, they were nearby streams or rivers that buried them in silt. Over the course of time, the organic wood material was replaced by silica creating a quartz replica of the tree trunk. As North and South America separated and moved, to park land moved over 2000 miles north. In the process, the rainforests and animals perished and the climate changed dramatically. Over time and erosion, the petrified wood has come to the surface. This wood can be seen in abundance throughout the park. Also, the skeletons of many extinct “early dinosaurs” have been discovered and excavated.
The park land has been occupied by various American Indian tribes for more than 13,000 years and is located in New Mexico Navajo and Apache counties of today. There are several ruins including a building constructed from petrified wood. There are also several sites with petroglyphs.
The highlight of the park may be the astounding Painted Desert and surrounding areas. They have distinctive colors and shapes that were caused by the erosion of rock layers over the past 200 million years. It is easy to see the park via the scenic drive, which has a large number of pull offs to take it all in. There are only a few hiking trails and most are more of a walk than a hike, but they are worth taking if you have the time. We stayed in Holbrook which is the closest town to the Park. It’s an old Route 66 town that looks exactly like what you would expect, but has decent lodging and dining. You can see the park in a day and walk a couple of the shorter/easier hikes. Take two days if you want to hike into the valleys on the north end of the Park.
A visit to Petrified Forest is not quite the experience you get at a Zion or Yosemite, but is well worth visiting if you’re passing through the area. After all, it’s not often that you can see and touch something that’s over 200 million years old and existed before North America was its own continent.
