Saving the Petrified Forest
Near Holbrook, Arizona
Two hundred twenty-five million years ago, this part of what is now Arizona was a tropical forest growing near the ancient equator. When those trees fell, they were buried by sediment, and over millions of years, mineral-rich groundwater replaced wood cells with silica and iron and carbon compounds, turning the logs to stone one molecule at a time. By the time American settlers arrived in the eighteen eighties, the petrified logs lying across the desert floor east of Holbrook were considered a wonder.
They were also almost immediately a target. Visitors pried away chunks and carried them home. Commercial operations arrived with wagons and tools to haul out the largest pieces for grinding into abrasive and for sale as curiosities.
By the eighteen nineties, the damage was severe enough that the Arizona territorial legislature petitioned Congress to intervene, though that first attempt failed. Congress passed the Antiquities Act in June of nineteen oh six, giving the president authority to designate national monuments on federal land. Theodore Roosevelt used that authority on December eighth, nineteen oh six, to create Petrified Forest National Monument.
Congress upgraded it to national park status in nineteen sixty-two. The park now protects hundreds of thousands of acres of fossil wood, prehistoric petroglyphs left by Ancestral Puebloan people, and the Painted Desert badlands. Rangers still stop cars leaving the park to check for stolen wood.
Signs say a curse follows those who take it. The park service keeps a drawer of pieces mailed back with apology letters, which suggests some visitors eventually believe in the curse, or in guilt, which may amount to the same thing.
