Petrified Forest National Park: Trees Made of Stone

Petrified Forest National Park in the Arizona badlands is an awe-inspiringly beautiful landscape. Not only does it feature beautiful rock formations and stripey geography but also petrified wood. Lying on the ground all over the park, you can get up close and personal with trees of stone, many of which resemble rainbows.

This article will assume that you have entered the park from the northern side, which is exit 311 on Interstate 40 through Painted Desert.

Teepees and Blue Mesa

Driving from the north, you first past Puerco Pueblo, which is an old indigenous dwelling ruin made of stones. There is a lot of signage; however, we skipped it during our trip as it is mostly reconstructed rather than being original – and there are many original ones throughout Arizona.

The Teepees are cones made of banded mudstone in various shades of grey, blue, purple, and green. There are also some white minor sandstone beds as well as some iron, manganese and other mineral compounds that add a lot of colour.

The road through Petrified Forest National Park takes you near the Teepees but there is a turnoff that leads to the Blue Mesa, which I highly recommend. In addition to going in amongst the teepees, there is also the Blue Mesa trailhead, which allows you to walk around these giants and get up close and personal.

Petrification Process

Before we continue our tour of Petrified Forest National Park, it is interesting to understand the nature of petrified wood. This process started over 200 million years ago when there was an ancient river system in this area. The wood was quickly buried under large amounts of sediment and debris, effectively cutting off all access to oxygen and slowing down the process of decay to a scale of hundreds of years.

As the wood slowly decayed, the missing parts were replaced with minerals. Silica that had dissolved from volcanic ash was absorbed by the wood and crystalised within the structure of the wood, thereby replacing the organic material. Over time other compounds also made their way into the structure, giving the various parts of wood its colour through jewel-like crystals of clear quartz, purple amethyst, yellow citrine, and smoky quartz.

This process did not happen to one specific type of tree but to many different ones including also ferns and plant spores.

One thing to note as well about the wood is that it has not been cut, for all it has clean breaks in many of the logs. The story behind these breaks can be traced back about 60 million years ago when the Colorado Plateau was being uplifted. These logs, which until this time were still trapped under the former sediment, were hard and brittle due to being made primarily of quartz. As the surrounding layers moved, they put stresses on the trees and many of them broke under the strain, just like a glass rod would. Because of the hardness of the material, these broke cleanly, which is why many people mistake the cuts for being made by a chainsaw.

Crystal Forest

The Crystal Forest is the next trail to the south where you can park your car, get out and hike. This is the area where the concentration of petrified wood skyrockets within the park. You can also walk around, through and over many larger pieces of petrified wood, observing the colourful striations. These range from pearly whites and yellows all the way through the rainbow to browns, purples and greens.

The trail is a 1.2-km/ 0.75-mile paved loop, meaning that it is very accessible and those of limited mobility will also be able to enjoy it.

Giant Logs Trail

The last trail is located in the south of the park at the Petrified Forest National Park Visitor Center. Known as Giant Logs Trail, it consists of two parts: east and west.

The eastern trail is less than a mile and goes to the old Agate House, a small dwelling that was made out of the petrified wood. The western trail is the more impressive of the two, with many examples of petrified wood along the trail, including some very large ones. This trail is also partially paved with the remaining surface being packed dirt and/or gravel.