Route 66 in the News
Petrified Forest a Must-See on 66
2005-01-16 12:56:28
Sadly, since its "discovery" by California-bound pioneers in the 19th century, this national treasure has been so despoiled by greed, negligence and criminal exploitation that it is a mere shadow of what it once was --- one of the great, natural wonders of the world.
Nowhere is this sad fact more obvious than in an area called the Crystal Forest. Today, it is a nearly one-mile walking trail through a landscape of colorful, petrified logs, some with glassy amethyst and quartz crystals. It’s an interesting and sometimes fascinating stroll through 225 million years of natural history.
But back in the 19th century, it’s said that the Crystal Forest area was a wall-to-wall landscape of petrified logs.
Not only did commercial exploiters rush in and steal the petrified wood, they even used dynamite to blow up the logs just to mine the crystals. What took nature tens of millions of years to create was destroyed in the blink of an eye by man’s stupidity.
President Theodore Roosevelt recognized that the treasures of the Petrified Forest had to be protected, and he declared it a National Monument in 1906.Still, it was nearly 10 years before the park had any kind of federal presence and protection. In 1932, 53,200 more acres of the Painted Desert were bought and added to the monument.
The monument gained national park status in 1962. In 1970, 50,000 acres of the park north of Interstate 40 became the first designated wilderness area in the national park system.
But the thievery continues even to this day. In fact, the National Park Service estimates that as much as a ton of rock a month is stolen from the park.
The problem is so serious that cars are subject to search. Fines start at $275. Visitors, in fact, are recruited to play Big Brother, too. When paying the entrance fee, besides the usual brochures, you’ll also be given a form to fill out in case you observe anyone taking anything, defacing property or climbing on ruin walls.
The park is open only during daylight hours, and there are no campgrounds. Want to watch the sun rise over the Painted Desert at Kachina Point? Unless you’re a park ranger, or a backpacker in the wilderness, forget it. You’ll need your imagination.
Fortunately, imagination can be used for more than just surveying the damage. Imagine the forces of nature that created this area. And imagine the people -- both ancient and of much more recent vintage -- that have come before you.
In the Late Triassic period, the region was part of Pangaea, an ancient supercontinent, and the Petrified Forest was a tropical forest sitting on the equator. The continents drifted apart, pushing the region north and west, and the climate changed.
Petrified wood can be found anywhere and everywhere in the world, but no place on the planet has there ever been a find of such magnitude -- 225 million-year-old trees that became submerged in a primordial swamp, each decaying cell replaced by silica deposits crystallized into quartz in the exact shape of the fallen tree. Sometimes, it’s necessary to reach out and touch the logs to convince yourself that they are indeed made of stone.
What was once a vast floodplain populated by crocodile-like reptiles, giant amphibians and small dinosaurs is now the multi-hued badlands of the Chinle Formation -- aka the Painted Desert. A total of 93,533 acres of these badlands now form the Petrified Forest National Park, although that’s actually only a fraction of the Painted Desert, which covers some 1,500 square miles.
The soft, clay soil has yielded a gold mine of treasures for paleontologists, who have been studying fossils of ancient plants and animals in the park since 1932.
People have lived and worked in the region for at least 10,000 years, and hundreds of petroglyphs within the park chronicle their passage. A structure called Puerco Pueblo, believed to have been built around 1250 A.D., is a partially stabilized 100-room pueblo. It may have housed nearly 1,200 people.
Of more recent history, the park is the only one in the National Park System containing a section of Historic Route 66. Traces of an old roadbed and weathered telephone poles mark the path. (I-40 now slices through the northern tip of the park, making it one of the most easily accessible national parks to highway travelers.)
The Painted Desert Inn (now closed for renovations) was just off Route 66. The Fred Harvey Company brought its famous "Harvey Girls" to staff the wayside facility when it took over management in 1947.
A railroad line cuts through the park, too. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway was once was known by a name that was also an Academy Award-winning tune from the movie "The Harvey Girls" - the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe.
(If your imagination is sharp enough, you might just spot Judy Garland and Ray Bolger singing and dancing up a storm in praise of that colorful old railroad.)
A 28-mile long park road connects the north and south entrances to the park, and both are easily accessible to I-40. Tourists heading west can enter through the North gate and exit through the South gate onto U.S. Route 180, which is just 19 miles from the town of Holbrook and a return to I-40. Eastbound travelers can simply reverse the procedure.
The Painted Desert Visitor Center at the North entrance has rest rooms, a restaurant, bookstore, exhibits and an informative 20-minute orientation film.
The park is home to a variety of desert wildlife, including many species of birds, mammals and reptiles (most of which are not active in daylight hours ..so you’ll need your imagination there, too). In the spring, there’s a wide variety of wildflowers and flowering cacti. Along the Puerco River, there’s even a lush stretch of green that turns spectacularly golden in the fall.
There are spectacular views of the Painted Desert at the north end of the park from more than half a dozen points and an easy one-mile roundtrip scenic rim trail between Kachina and Tawa points.
Throughout the park there are numerous scenic areas, including Newspaper Rock and The Tepees --- cone-shaped formations of layered blues, purples and grays created by iron, carbon, manganese and other minerals.
At Blue Mesa and Blue Mesa Trail, there’s a three-mile loop road and a steep one-mile loop trail along cliffs with some views that are not only spectacular but downright scary.
Near the South entrance is the Rainbow Forest Museum and the Giant Logs Trail, where the park’s largest surviving log, "Old Faithful", can be seen. If you only get out of the car once all day, this is the place. You won’t be disappointed. The trail is paved and less than half a mile long.
You won’t even need your imagination. The Giant Logs speak for themselves.
~Delcotimes.com
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