| The Petrified Forest
National Park contains one of the largest concentrations of
petrified wood -- prehistoric trees which have had their wood fibers
replaced with mineral deposits over thousands of years to become
fossilized stones. The park covers over 200,000 acres of desert and
has petroglyphs, archaeological sites, 225 million-year-old fossils,
miles of maintained trails, and a visitor center and museum. The
northern part of the park is called the Painted Desert, a badlands
of multi-colored rock from the Late Triassic Period called the
Chinle Formation. To get to the
Petrified Forest National Park, take Interstate-17 north out of
Phoenix to Flagstaff and go east on Interstate-40 to Exit 311, 25
miles past Holbrook. From Albuquerque, it is about 48 miles west of
the Arizona border on Interstate-40.
 For
more information, contact:
PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK
Box 2217
Petrified Forest, AZ 86028
928-524-6228
Also see
the National Park Service website on
PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL PARK
A trail winds through mounds of eroded
rock in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
Photo by
Jim Hoey
|
