A. C. VROMAN AND THE STONE FOREST

Adam Clark Vroman and the Forest of Stone

A sensitive turn-of-the-century master photographer captures the fragile beauty of the Petrified Forest...

"After ninety miles in a lumber wagon from Moqui country, one would scarcely expect to enjoy starting on another fiftymile, or more, trip the next day, but we found our time so limited that seven o'clock next morning found us at breakfast and arrangements made."

Adam Clark Vroman, Pasadena bookman and turn-of-the-century photographer, had survived the bumpy ride from the Hopi mesas to Holbrook, Arizona. Now, he and his party-Mrs. Thaddeus Lowe, Horatio Nelson Rust, and C. J.

Crandall were off again to witness yet another Arizona attraction, a spectacular petrified forest.

By 1895, what was to become Petrified Forest National Park was a hotbed of controversy. The first written report of "stone trees" had been made only forty-four years earlier by Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, in his survey of lands lately ceded by Mexico. Yet the forest was already a favorite spot for tourists.

The Atlantic & Pacific Railroad had built a station nearby on the ranch of Adam Hanna, where the town of Adamana (a contraction of his name) now stands. Hanna, an easterner who had taken up ranching and made a neat fortune, declared himself the unofficial curator of "Chalcedony Park," welcoming visitors at the station and taking them to a small hotel that stood near his ranch house.

Many of these early tourists were souvenir hunters, eager to take away pieces of the fossilized wood as large as they could carry. But it was big business that continually threatened the very existence of the forest in the 1890s.

Eastern jewelry firms had hired crews of men to blast apart entire logs, searching for the quartz and amethyst crystals often found within them. Even more damaging was a stamp mill, erected in the vicinity of Agate Bridge, to crush fossilized logs into emery. Afterwards, great hoppersful were transported to a Denver abrasives factory for manufacturing sandpaper!

It is impossible to know how much our tourists from Pasadena knew about this problem. But Vroman, the artist, seems keenly sensitive to it-in his photographs as well as his descriptive writing.

After boarding their train at Holbrook and riding the short distance to Adam Hanna's, the Pasadenans engaged a team and wagon.

"Unfortunately," Vroman continues, "Adam's spring wagon was away, so the usual old lumber wagon was our only conveyance. After a couple hours' work repairing, putting on brakes, etc., we got started. Our team was slow beyond mea-sure, and the road nearly as smooth as no road at all."

Many of its early visitors expected the stone forest to be one of standing trees, trunks, twigs, and branches, all petrified in place. My own grandmother once related to me her initial surprise at finding only chunks of broken logs strewn over the ground. Vroman, too, was not immune to this typical disappointment.

"But," he notes, "when we took into consideration the ages that must have passed

Adam Clark Vroman

Vroman's party was welcomed by the Hopi Indians. They offered shelter, food, and access to tribal dances in exchange for copies of the photographs Vroman made of them.

The Indians became his friends. Vroman returned to the Hopi mesas year after year to document village life. His photographic style was simple, direct, and sympathetic.

Adam Clark Vroman

Text continued from page 29 since these trees were trees and examined the beautiful agatized specimens, we forgave our first feelings."

Still, Vroman does not seem inspired by the natural phenomenon until he reaches Agate Bridge.

"About one mile from where most of the forest lies, but up on the mesa, is the most curious and interesting place of all. Here, lying across a small cañon is a petrified tree, the only one intact for so great a length-forty-six feet. The ends are imbedded in solid rock, else it would drop of its own weight. It is riddled with cross seams but is held together by the pressure at each end. As this agatized wood is almost as heavy as iron, it must weigh many hundred tons. It is from twenty-four to thirty-two inches in diameter," Vroman writes with unusual scientific precision. Then, suddenly, he changes his tone: "Some heathen will lay a pound of dynamite on it someday just to see it fall and thus remove the most interesting part of the forest."

Had Adam Hanna told the tourists about the recent blastings? Or were workers, even at that moment, blowing another log to smithereens? Vroman does not tell us but resumes his story: "It was nearing sundown when we left the bridge. Water was not to be had, so we drove on about eight miles to a dry river bed and struck camp. While Old Adam and Mr. Crandall dug a well two feet deep, getting some muddy water, I gathered up dry sage brush, and we soon had the coffeepot boiling. After a hearty meal, we sat about the campfire while Adam told stories of the early days in Arizona. "It must have been near ten o'clock when someone suggested our home friends seeing us at that moment just as we were. I thought of my 'Flash Light' material, and soon we had the camera out and in place, but we wanted no one out of the picture. How to light the 'Flash' with-

Out

out a fuse was the question. At last a thought! We took a piece of string about six feet long, soaked it in bacon fat, lay one end on the flash powder, and all took our places. One of us lit the other end, jumped in place before the fire reached the powder, and the result is No. 19. Just as we were, our friends can see us." Vroman took home his photographs, one way he knew to save the forest from the blasters and stamp mill. Eleven years later, however, his enchanted memories were further reassured. In 1906, in large part a result of the continued efforts of local citizens, President Theodore Roosevelt established Arizona's Petrified Forest as one of the first national monuments, to be preserved against both commercial and individual vandalism forever.

Kenneth Funsten is a free-lance writer specializing in southwestern history, travel, and inhabitants. He is the children's drama critic for L. A. Parent, and his work also has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and Westways.