Petrified Forest National Park

Established December 9, 1962

93,533 acres

A sun-swept corner of the Painted Desert draws over 900,000 visitors each year. While most come to see one of the world's largest concentrations of brilliantly colored petrified wood, many leave having glimpsed something more. The 147 square miles of Petrified Forest open a window on an environment more than 200 million years old, one radically different from today's high desert.

Where you now see ravens soaring over a stark landscape, leathery-winged pterosaurs once glided over rivers teeming with armor-scaled fish and giant, spatula-headed amphibians. Nearby ran herds of some of the earliest dinosaurs. Scientists have identified several hundred species of fossil plants and animals in Petrified Forest.

The park consists of two main sections. Located in the south are the major concentrations of the famous petrified wood; in the north rise the colorful banded badlands of the Painted Desert. Giant fossilized logs, many of them fractured into cord-wood-size segments, lie scattered throughout, like headstones bearing a deceased's likeness.

Much of the quartz rock that replaced the wood tissue 200 million years ago is tinted in rainbow hues. Many visitors cannot resist taking rocks, despite strict regulations and stiff fines against removing any material.To see how fast the rock was disappearing, rangers placed a number of invisibly marked pieces next to a well-used trail. Within two weeks 20 percent of them were gone.