This set of pages cover the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. It was briefly touched on in the Route 66 Arizona page but it is so spectacular that I decided that it deserved a section on its own.

The general layout of the park is as shown in this sketch map. More detailed (and much better drawn) maps can be found on the park web site.

For convenience the park has been broken up into four main areas as described below. Each of these areas is covered with photographs in its own page. They are described in the order you encounter them coming from the southern entrance on Highway 180.

The areas are as follows:

• The Petrified Forest - this was originally a floodplain and trees that fell into this were covered by a layer of silt, mud and volcanic ash and eventually the silica rich groundwater replaced the wood tissue with silica which crystallised into quartz.
• The Painted Desert - where the different minerals in the soil have resulted in coloured bands being created which are visible in the hills.
• Newspaper Rock - displays a large collection of ancient petroglyphs that have been cut into the “varnish” that naturally formed on the rocks.
• The Northern Section of the Painted Desert - this part of the park continues north from Newspaper Rock over the interstate and loops round past the Painted Desert Inn to the Visitor Centre and exit 311 of the Interstate.

Also worthy of note is the complex of buildings at the Visitors Centre at the northern end of the park (near the Interstate and Route 66). It is the Painted Desert Community Complex Historic District which was built to provide facilities for those involved with the National Park as well as visitors. It included a school, housing, recreation area, maintenance yard, visitor centre, gas station, and concessions. It was built as part of the Mission 66 programme to update and upgrade the National Parks, more information on it (and other visitor centres) can be found in the Mission 66 Web Pages and in the on-line book “Mission 66 Visitor Centres”.

If you reached these pages from the Arizona Route 66 page then click here to be taken back to the point you left.