THE ENCHANTED STONE FOREST

IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Among these ageless and time-sculptured trees That put forth leaves in unrecorded years, Buried in sands, submerged by nameless seas, What trace of those whose shade they were appears?

Is there not something carved when earth was young And left by eager hands for us to view: Perhaps two names in a forgotten tongue, And a heart with an arrow piercing through?

If Isabella of Spain had lived a little longer and if the Spanish explorers in the Southwest had travelled a little farther west in their fruitless search for the Seven Cities of Cibola, they might have found for their Queen, a fabulous treasure of jewels. A million tons of jasper, amethyst, agate, carnelian-would have been more than enough to replace the crown jewels she pawned to start Columbus on his voyage. Who knows how differently our own nation's history might have read?

Instead, the Conquistadors named the shimmering stretches of unknown land-seen from afar-Desierto Pintado-our Painted Desert, and left the greatest display of petrified wood in the world to be discovered three hundred years later and to be called (surely less poetically than they would have done) the Petrified Forest National Monument.

This treasure chest, unique in many ways on any continent, lies open-lidded in northeastern Arizona. Modern highways make it as easy to reach as Central Park from New Jersey, Pike's Peak from Colorado Springs, or the Rainbow Pier at Long Beach. The Main Street of America (U.S. 66) runs right across the upper, Painted Desert Section, the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe line bisects its throat a little to the south, and U.S. 260 angles through the lower corner, between Holbrook and St. Johns.

If daylight hours, particularly when the sun is high, finds you-in northeastern Arizona-intent on cocktails or that business appointment you must keep on the street, somewhere between the Chicago and Los Angeles corners, you can make a slight detour and go clear through the monument. Twenty-two miles south gets you to the other end and another 19 will hurry you on 260, northwest to 66 at Holbrook (or in reverse). A few minutes stop at the Rim of the Painted Desert to look across an expanse from which the sun has washed every vestige of color and modeling-then as fast as the law allows (35 miles within the preserve) will enable you, with no stops except at entrance and exit stations, to see a vast amount of nothing while still granting license to claim, “Oh, yes, we've been to the Petrified Forest National Monument. That makes the umpteenth park we 'took in' across the country.” If, however, you are curious about one of the gaudiest bits of business Nature has worked out in the last 160 million years, along with thought-provoking prehistoric ruins and pictographs, and you do have a little time to spend, let's see what makes this area so famous. (Right now a bill has been passed to change its status to the lofty one of national park.) Afterwards you can be sure of finding whatever kind of accommodations you fancy-whichever way you're headed. Eastward on U.S. 66, in the 50 miles to the state line are pleasant spots, at and between Chambers and Sanders. Holbrook is just 20 miles west. On U.S. 260, St. Johns is a mere 43 miles away. If lunchtime is bothering you, the Painted Desert Inn at the top and Rainbow Lodge at the bottom of the monument map are especially designed to fill the void. For convenience sake, we'll go first to the Painted Desert Section, just a turn of the wheel off U.S. 66, onto a short loop road along the Rim. The Painted Desert Inn is there, a low brown house of pueblo architecture, most satisfying to the eye accustomed to flat roofs and projecting beams. The Indians who lived throughout the great southwest long before it became American (or they were called Indians) originated the style. Hand-shapedadobe bricks keep out summer heat and winter cold alike, giving it a permanent, homey look and the walls seem to have their roots deep in the soil.

Just a stone's-throw from it is the Rim, a three-mile grandstand seat of desert panorama. As I have hinted, the midday hours do not do it justice. It's as though the land itself were taking a siesta, stretched out flat, with its face covered. Before and after that, climaxed at those twinfocus points, when the sun first breaks over the horizon and when its slips back down under, the view is brushed with magic. The air itself has a palpable clarity and through its magnifying glass quality-you can see for miles and miles and more miles.

In this view, there aren't any moving trains, tiny boxes of houses, or even moving figures of horseman, cow or dog to gage distance by. There is only the irregular swoop of Chinle formation, pushed up into hills here and ridges there, and tiers and tiers of sculptured land, threaded by dry washes. One time there will be all blues, amethyst and pink, turning kaleidoscope-fashion while you watch to saffron or blood red. At sunset the sky often glows along ragged mesas and ledges, quivering like a ballet dancer on her very toes.

Wind may cavort through shallow canyons or frolic on wide open stretches to make the scene luminous from horizon to horizon, a philharmonic symphony in visible tones. Or it may be stabbingly clear, chiseled into a study of elemental geometric planes by the savage bite of erosion. Then you have a moonscape without the bother of interplanetary flight-sear and absolutely lifeless, a profoundly effective glimpse of what the world may have been like when this scenery was laid out, millions and millions of years ago.

Somewhere off in that view, without road or trail to it is the sixth or Black Forest, one of the last where there were discovered concentrations of petrified wood.

We were standing on the Rim one day when I heard an Eastern visitor say to a park ranger: "How can I get over to that highway. It looks paved and can't be more than half a mile away."

"There is no road over there," he told her. "What you see is just a dry streambed and it's at least twelve miles from here."

As the woman joined her family and drove off, the Ranger turned to us.

"Just watch. She doesn't believe me and they'll take the first turn-off in that direction. It goes a little way to another lookout, still on the Rim and just as far away from her 'road.' Half a dozen people do it every day. It's hard to understand just what tricks the clear air plays on our sense of distance."

The Painted Desert, which extends for about 300 miles along the north side of the Little Colorado River has many surprises for the scenery-lover. I always think that the particular portion visible in the Petrified Forest is a splendid place to get a first taste of the peculiar charms of desert landscape. It's an acquired taste, you know, like that for avocados, blue cheese, or fine wines. Few people like it right at first. I suppose that is because the spaces are too wide, and without the comforting security of trees or towns. The pattern becomes apparent gradually. In time, after repeated or continual exposure, the desert seeps into the blood and settles somewhere back of the eyes, rendering lesser panoramas insipid and cluttered. Mission 66, a far-seeing program involving all of the

NOTES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS OPPOSITE PAGE

"RAINBOW COLORS IN STONE" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Graphic View camera; daylight Ektachrome; f.22 at 1/5th sec.; 5" Tessar lens; June, sunny day. Here is a view of petrified wood in the Second Forest. Tossed on the ground in disarray, the ends of the logs show the brilliant shades created by mineral traces in the petrified wood. A Polaroid filter deepened the sky and the colors. It is not difficult to compose a picture in this colorful National Monument with so many specimens of wood to serve as foreground and the clay hills, through which a pathway winds, as the background.

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"IN BLUE FOREST OF PETRIFIED FOREST" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Graphic View camera; daylight Ektachrome; f.29 at 1/2 sec. with Polaroid filter; 5" Tessar lens; June, sunny day. View from the rim, reached by the Upper Blue Forest Drive in Petrified National Forest looking over the colored clay hills which John Muir named for its overall blue tones. Petrified wood is found scattered throughout, but is best seen by a half hour walk on the trail to the Lower Blue Forest Drive. A picture in this area cannot be taken in midday. Lower light catches the colors and modeling of the weird scenery.

"THE FALLEN MONARCH" BY DICK CARTER. 4x5 Lin-hoff camera; Ektachrome; f.25 at 1/5 sec.; Schneider Angulon 90mm lens; June, slightly backlighted; ASA 12-Norwood Read-ing 210. This fallen monarch is located in Petrified Forest National Monument on the north side of Highway 66 and is about three miles from the Painted Desert Lookout, in an area known as the Black Forest (about ten miles by jeep.) "Onyx Bridge" is official name for this feature. Total exposed length: 50 feet; length of unsupported portion: 30 feet; diameter 20" at center with very little taper from end to end. Log bridges are a rarity because of the characteristic fracturing of the fossil logs, but there is nothing rare about the black petrifaction or the species of wood (aruacarioxylon arizonicum.) It was through the cooperation of Monument Superintendent, Fred Fagergren, who appointed one of his rangers to accompany the photographer to the bridge site by jeep, that he was able to make this photograph. So far as is known, no photo of this bridge has been published before.

"AGATE HOUSE PETRIFIED FOREST" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Speed Graphic camera; daylight Kodachrome; f.32 at 1/5th sec.; 6" Ektar lens; June, sunny day. This structure is in the Third Forest of the Petrified Forest National Monument. It is reached by road and then a short walk by trail to a hill from which an overlook can be had of the surrounding desert. This partly restored prehistoric ruin shows more of the texture than the coloring of the petrified wood but adds interest to the area as proof that men lived here long ago (probably between the 4th and 13th centuries.)

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"PANORAMA-PAΙΝΤED DESERT" BY HUBERT A. LOWMAN 4x5 Brand 17 View camera; Ektachrome; f.16 at 1/10th sec.; 5" Ektar lens; April, late afternoon sunlight; ASA 12. Photograph was made in the Petrified Forest National Monument, just north of U.S. 66 about a half mile, on the road along the Painted Desert Rim to the Harvey House Restaurant. Camera was set up within a few yards of the road. In late afternoon the light was much weaker than it would have been in mid-afternoon. About half as long an exposure would have been indicated for this subject two hours earlier in the day. The Painted Desert responds to every mood of time and the weather, and changes in color and shadow as the hours change.

"LANDSCAPE OF SHIMMERING COLOR" BY FRANK PROCTOR. 4x5 Speed Graphic Pacemaker camera; Ektachrome; f.10 at 1/50th sec.; 127 mm. Ektar lens; July, bright afternoon light; 200 plus on Weston Meter. Photograph taken at the Painted Desert View Point. The endless miles of rolling mounds of painted sand that form Arizona's Painted Desert is a challenge both to the amateur and professional photographer. Bright sunlight on the painted sand, brilliant in reflexion, is hard to capture on film.

"ARCH OF PETRIFIED WOOD" BY JOSEF MUENCH. 4x5 Linhof camera; daylight Ektachrome; f.32 at 1/5 sec.; 6" Schneider lens; December, bright, sunny day. Photograph taken in the Blue Forest area of the Petrified Forest National Monument. A low angle was needed to show the bridge formed by a long petrified log, already breaking into sections as the soft earth is eroded away from under it. This tree lived 160 million years ago.

"WILDERNESS OF COLOR" BY JERRY D. JACKA. 34xX4% Speed Graphic camera; Ektachrome; f.32 at 1/2 sec.; Optar 4.7 lens; July, early afternoon, slightly cloudy; Weston meter reading 250. Photograph taken from first view point east of the Petrified Forest turn-off on U.S. 66, approximately 26 miles east of Holbrook. Photograph is looking north from 66. Clouds, as they do to most western landscapes, add to the dramatic in a well-taken photograph. Scenes, such as this, are at their most colorful during the summer thundershower seasons, when the desert itself is washed clean of gray, dull dust and the thunderheads accent not only the blue of sky but color of earth as well.

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"WALLS OF THE BLUE FOREST" BY FRANK PROCTOR. 4x5 Speed Graphic Pacemaker camera; Ektachrome; f.20 at 1/25th sec.; 127mm. Ektar lens; July, very bright light; Weston Meter 400 plus. There is a trail in the Blue Forest at the parking space which goes up to the top of the mound. This picture was taken a few feet away from the trail. The bright light during the summer months do have an effect on light meters. "I always average the readings from the sky to the brightest spot, and try to keep within the latitude of the film, if possible," Proctor says.

national park system-to culminate on the 50th anniversary in 1966, is scheduled to change the focus of the Painted Desert Section. A Visitor Center, headquarters and a museum will enlarge the interpretive service.

Leaving the Rim and crossing busy U.S. 66 (an overhead is also planned here to remove the anxious waiting at the corner till you dare dash across the busy thoroughfare) the park road negotiates a narrow connecting link between the two main portions. An overpass over the Santa Fe line and a bridge crossing the Rio Puerco lead on to the checking station.

If you are entering here, an annual fee of one dollar or a fifteen-day charge of 50c is due and payable for each automobile or motorcycle. Pedestrians are free-perhaps on the theory that if you've walked-from anywhereyou deserve to keep your money.

As receipt the Ranger will give you a monument folder, a cheery greeting and some good advice. The gist of it will be: "The Petrified Forest National Monument is yours to see and enjoy, but remember-you can't take it with you. True, a million tons of petrified wood may sound like a lot, but just one generation of visitors could remove it, a souvenir in every pocket. It took Nature well over 160 million years to create the spot; we should be able to preserve it for our children and their children for at least a few thousand years.

"Petrified wood in bits, or selected and polished, cut and set in rings, bracelets, tie pins and every other way, is available in curio shops. The wood came from other than monument lands and while you pay something for it-it's less expensive in the long run to you as a taxpayer."

A few yards from the checking station is the partially excavated ruins of a prehistoric dwelling. Set around a hollow square 230 feet by 180 are the remnants of walls. An exhibit as well as the Ranger in charge can give you some sidelights on the early people who farmed and hunted here a long, long time ago-probably from about 500 to 1400 A.D.

Farther along the road are two gigantic hills of clay, the Teepees, banded in soft color that have run down the gray sides.

After another few miles you reach the parking space for Newspaper Rock. From the lip of a low rim it is one of a number of tumbled sandstone boulders and is covered with crude designs. Some irregular steps wind down among them and at close hand, the pictographs are seen to be pecked in the rock. There are human figures, hands, feet, animals, sunrays and some just plain doodling.

It would be nice if these had a meaning and could tell us facts about life in those early days. Archeologists have proved, however, that they open no door onto the past and that the Indians had no written language, just as our modern tribes have none. Perhaps instead of lying on a couch, talking away his troubles to a psychiatrist, our first American rid himself of his emotional blocs by airing them on a stone. Dry climate plus some overhang of rock has preserved them for us.

In the Blue Forest, soon reached, we come to the heart of what the Monument is all about. The Lower Blue Forest Drive winds through low hills, with petrified wood in hefty chunks along either side of the road, just as it was tumbled down into ravines and lodged in tangled piles on the slopes. Like weathered logs, the sides are apt to be dull gray or black. At the ends or wherever theouter layer has broken off, are the bright colors, rainbow shades that make the wood so fascinating. Try to find a shade that's missing-translucent or opaque. Smoky Quartz is black; jasper comes in red, brown, yellow, blue, green; the pink to reddish is Carnelian; Agate has definite patterns of color-that in Onyx lie in parallel lines. In the amethyst you will see several shadings of purple or violet, not because of any actual coloring matter, but because light is broken in passage through the stone.

A three-mile loop of Upper Blue Forest Drive mounts to a plateau from which the scarp drops abruptly into hills that look velvet soft. The great naturalist, John Muir, stood here when he first visited the Blue Forest and named it for the over-all tones of blue. A trail leads back down to the lower road, and if one of your party is willing to drive the car-you will get quite a thrill out of walking down-it takes about half an hour. After a few steps on spongy, bentonitic clay, the walker is swallowed up in a strange and uncanny stageset where color and form are paramount. Petrified wood is scattered here and there, pieces protruding from the clay or in piles of chips that might have been freshly cut. I recall having to touch a piece of the pale yellow stuff to convince myself it was really stone.

Agate Bridge is next on our itinerary-111 feet of exposed log, spanning a 45-foot ravine to form a footcrossing of solid semi-precious stone. Probably the most famous petrified log in the world, it has a cement underpinning to assure that it will not be washed away at the caprice of some flood. Small desert trees around it point up how different the climate must have been when such giants as this fallen one could grow there.

The largest concentrations of petrified wood are found in the southern part of the monument and we approach in order on trails off spur roads into the First, Second and Third Forests.

Undoubtedly, some visitors are surprised to find forests lying down. How they came to be scattered on the ground and what turned them from vegetable fiber to rock is a long and exciting story. Questions about the wood begin to fill the mind as the forests are viewed and will be answered at the museum. Descriptions of the forests are difficult. No one, probably, has ever made a count of even the biggestsay over 100 feet long, and the number would be a drab thing compared to what the visitor sees-flashing colors from massive sections down to pieces smaller than their sparkle, laid on the vast background of clays.

Some chunks balance on hill slopes or on crests, almost daring erosion to knock them off. A surprising number of the pieces are in stove-lengths, a result, it is believed, of pressure when the region, complete with its hidden treasure in a 3000-foot thick blanket was lifted from below sea level to its present elevation. In the Second Forest are many pieces of white silicified wood. Some show scars of ancient fires and crystals have formed in the hollows. Here and in the Third Forest you can find boles 150 feet long, crisscrossed in a gargantuan, longsince dried up mill pond. Panorama Knoll in the Third Forest presents an overview, wood in the foreground and stretching to distant erupting hills and ledges. On another hilltop, reached by trail, is Agate House. This early pueblo dwelling has been indifferently restored but does show that the pre-

Time has replaced the living celi With jewel, the bough with bone, Long eons since these titans fell To sleep the sleep of stone.

Rainbows of flame are compassed there In ancient wood's imprint, Transformed by time's Medusa stare To foliage of flint.

Such splendors fire their rock repose As never limned live trees. O agate aureole and rose Of quartz eternities!

Historic Indians used the petrified wood in making houses as well as for arrowheads and ornaments. Rainbow Forest area centers around the museum and present headquarters, with a lodge where meals are served, a picnic ground and the present hub of the interpretive service.

The forest itself is reached through the museum and contains the gigantic Old Faithful log, with the largest root system ever found. Trails wind among the open-air displays, each rock with its own picture of the past. In the museum, the history of the region is cleverly told in diorama, sketch, picture and diagram. From the Triassic swamp with its living trees and the fern-like cycads, populated by equally huge and ugly creatures, through the death of the trees, their burial and transformation into stone-down to dazzling pieces of polished wood which are indeed museum pieces.

Scientists have other words for the process, but engagingly told as it is here, one needs only change the phrases to put Cinderella and Snow White in the shade. Because this really happened and we can see the ancient giants still lying under their spell-it has more appeal to our imaginations.

One feature of the monument of which you may see little, since most of them are nocturnal in habits, are the animals. Even though none but a lizard shows himself to you be assured that there is quite a list of desert dwellers. The pronghorn, bobcat, badger, rabbit, coyote, porcupine, skunk, fox and ground squirrels are here under official protection.

A variety of flowers may seem equally shy, but spring brings them out to add color among the petrified wood, the yellow of golden sego lily, the brilliant Mari-posa, four o'clocks and several species of cactus, among others.

Not far from the Museum is the South Entrance Station where a Ranger waits, wanting to be assured that you are not taking away any of the nation's jewels. After all, you will want to come again to see them. Would they look as well anywhere else than in their own painted set-ting, evolved through eons of time?

Some seven million people have checked through the station (since the count was begun in 1924) and if each spent only a single hour there-the trees in their fallen glory have given seven million daylight hours of wonder and delight. (The road is closed at night.) By 1966 the number is envisioned as at least 1,350,000 visitors a year.

Before Arizona became a state-back in 1895-the Territorial Legislature asked Congress to establish a na-tional park here. Without such protection there was great danger of it all being carried off to use as curios, abrasives, pipe-stems or fireplace ornaments.

In 1906 brought monument status but the importance of the area has continued to grow, outstripping its facilities by 1942. These will be improved with more interpretive service, more personnel, as well as more buildings, essential to administration. Admirers of the monument, and that number must be as large as the visitor record, will be heartened at the move toward parkhood. Any of them who want to add a personal word of encouragement can get more information by writing to the Superintendent of the monument at Holbrook, Arizona. The Petrified Forest deserves a place among the supreme examples of natural wilderness, to be protected and used by the people-not just today-but for always.