50 Fun Facts About Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest National Park is in which U.S. state?

It straddles Navajo and Apache counties, with the Navajo Nation on its northern border.

The Painted Desert's name is translated from which Spanish phrase used by early explorers?

Oddly, the park's oldest Spanish inscriptions date only to the late 19th century, left by descendants of the colonists.

The park is named for its large deposits of what?

The park covers about 346 square miles of shrub steppe and colourful eroded hills.

What geographic term describes the park's colourful, deeply eroded and mostly bare hills?

Swelling bentonite clay cracks the surface and keeps plants from taking hold, which leaves the slopes bare to erosion.

The park's fossil trees lived during which geologic epoch, about 225 million years ago?

At the time the region sat near the equator on the edge of the supercontinent Pangaea, humid and subtropical.

Which rock formation holds the park's fossil logs and gives the Painted Desert its colours?

It is up to 800 feet thick in the park and full of bentonite clay that swells when wet, which is why little grows on the eroded slopes.

What mineral, dissolved from volcanic ash, replaced the organic matter to petrify the logs?

Traces of iron oxide and other impurities give the wood its reds, yellows and purples.

Most of the park's petrified wood comes from which extinct conifer?

At least nine species of fossil trees have been identified in the park, and every one of them is extinct.

Which crocodile-like giant reptiles are among the park's most famous fossil animals?

A phytosaur skull found near Blue Mesa in 1919 by Ynez Mexia kicked off decades of digging by Berkeley palaeontologists.

Which president used the brand-new Antiquities Act to make the area a national monument in 1906?

It was only the second national monument ever proclaimed, and the territorial legislature had been asking for a park since 1895.

In what year did the monument become a national park?

Wilderness areas followed in 1970, and a 2004 law authorised more than doubling the park to 218,533 acres.

Roughly how much petrified wood is estimated to be stolen from the park every year?

The fine is $325, and seven rangers plus fences and signs still cannot stop it.

Wood mailed back by guilty visitors cannot be returned to its original spot, so rangers put it where?

Returned pieces often arrive with letters blaming the 'curse' of the wood for years of bad luck.

Which historic transcontinental highway crossed the park until 1985 and survives as a grassy strip inside it?

The interstate, the BNSF railway and a river all still cross the park along roughly the same east-west line.

Which interstate crosses the park, alongside the BNSF railway?

More than 60 BNSF trains, mostly freight, rumble through the park every day.

Which town about 26 miles west of park headquarters is the nearest city?

There is no campground or lodging inside the park, so most visitors sleep in Holbrook's motels.

Lt. Amiel Whipple's 1853 survey named a wash in the park Lithodendron Creek, which means what?

Geologist Jules Marcou on the same expedition correctly pegged the trees as Triassic.

A wagon road built along the 35th parallel in 1857-60 experimented with what pack animal?

The 35th Parallel Route, also known as the Beale Camel Trail, is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which small ancestral Puebloan structure in the park was built almost entirely of petrified wood?

The eight-room pueblo dates to about 900-1200 CE and was partly rebuilt by the CCC in 1933-34.

Which large pueblo of roughly 200 rooms overlooks a river near the middle of the park?

Perhaps 200 people lived there at its peak; the last residents left around 1380 CE, probably driven out by drought.

Which conservationist first excavated the park's 200-room ruin in 1905-06 and urged its protection?

He never published his findings, but fossils he collected sit in the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

Most of the park's petroglyphs are pecked into what dark surface coating on the rocks?

Most of the park's rock art is thought to be between 650 and 2,000 years old.

Descendants of the park's Ancestral Puebloans live on the Hopi Mesas and at which pueblo?

More than 1,000 archaeological sites have been recorded in the park.

Roughly how long ago did the park's first human inhabitants, the Clovis-era people, arrive?

Clovis and Folsom spear points made of petrified wood are among the oldest artefacts found there.

Which architect, known for her Grand Canyon buildings, revised the Painted Desert Inn after WWII?

Under her the inn ran as a Fred Harvey House from 1947 until 1963.

Which Hopi artist painted the murals inside the Painted Desert Inn in 1947-48?

One mural shows a journey through the Painted Desert to collect salt.

The 1920s inn that preceded the Painted Desert Inn had what nickname, thanks to its building material?

The CCC rebuilt it in Pueblo Revival style between 1937 and 1940 to designs by NPS architect Lyle Bennett.

Which modernist architect designed the Painted Desert Visitor Center?

It is an unusual Mission 66-era modernist complex in a park better known for Pueblo Revival and petrified logs.

Which is the park's only venomous snake?

Gopher snakes, which imitate rattlers when disturbed, are far more common.

Which fast grassland mammal, capable of 60 mph sprints, roams the park?

They are the second-fastest land animal on Earth after the cheetah.

The plateau striped whiptail lizard found in the park is unusual because its population is what?

The collared lizard, the park's largest and most-seen reptile, turns up in every habitat.

Which of these park amphibians is the only member of its order found in the state?

Seven kinds of amphibians live in the park, all of them drinking through their skin rather than by mouth.

Roughly how many bird species have been recorded in the park since 1906?

The largest is the golden eagle, with a wingspan up to 7 feet; the smallest include Anna's hummingbird.

Which 4-to-8-million-year-old formation sits atop the older log-bearing rocks in the park's north?

That gap of about 200 million years in the rock record is called an unconformity.

Which flat-bottomed explosive volcanic craters, one visible from Pintado Point, are exposed in the park's north?

The upper layers of that formation also hold ash and lava from volcanoes as far away as southwestern Nevada.

Which uplifted region, pushed skyward starting about 60 million years ago, is the park part of?

Parts of the plateau eventually rose to 10,000 feet, and the erosion that followed stripped away everything above the log-bearing layers.

Roughly what fraction of the park is designated wilderness?

Free permits are needed for overnight stays, and groups are capped at eight.

Which president signed the 2004 bill authorising the park's expansion to more than double its size?

The expansion took it from 93,353 acres to 218,533 acres on paper.

Which railway's early-1880s arrival founded the trackside towns and brought the first tourists to the Chalcedony Forest?

It later became the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and then BNSF; Adamana is now a ghost town a mile from the park.

Which two named trails at the park's south end wind among the biggest fossil trunks?

Rangers give regular Giant Logs talks behind the museum, which also houses the fossil exhibits.

Park clocks never change all year because the state does not do what?

The park closes only on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Which federal work programme built roads, trails and structures in the monument between 1934 and 1942?

Its crews also rebuilt an eight-room pueblo and raised the Painted Desert Inn.

Roughly how long is the main park road running north-south between I-40 and U.S. 180?

The park is about 30 miles long north to south but pinches to a corridor just a mile wide in the middle.

During which three months does the park get 42 percent of its annual rain?

August is the wettest month, and summer dust devils can climb several thousand feet.

Which invasive Eurasian tree, also called saltcedar, threatens the park's washes by hogging water?

A 2005 survey found 447 plant species in the park, 57 of them invasive.

Which paleobotanist made the first palaeontological exploration of Petrified Forest in 1899?

Charles Camp of Berkeley became the most prolific collector of the early 20th century after Annie Alexander's 1921 visit to Blue Mesa.

Roughly how many recreational visitors did the park receive in 2018?

Compare that with more than 6 million at the Grand Canyon a few hours west.

Roughly how large an area does Petrified Forest National Park cover?

The park is about 30 miles long from north to south and only a few miles wide in places, straddling Apache and Navajo counties.

What is the highest point in Petrified Forest National Park, at about 6,230 feet?

The low point is about 5,340 feet along the Puerco River, so the whole park sits well above a mile in elevation.

Which ghost town sits about a mile west of the park's boundary, near the former railway stop?

Adamana was the trackside stop from which early tourists set out to see the petrified logs.