When Trees Become Immortal: The Giant Logs Trail

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We explore the Giant Logs Trail at Petrified Forest National Park, discovering how ancient wood transformed into stone through a mineralization process spanning millions of years. The trail showcases remarkable geological treasures while revealing the park's rich human history dating back to the early days of the National Park Service.

• Ancient conifers similar to modern pines formed the original forest before being preserved in stone
• "Old Faithful" stands as the most extensive preserved log, struck by lightning in 1962 and reconstructed by the Park Service
• The Civilian Conservation Corps built the Rainbow Forest complex during the Great Depression
• Stephen Mather, the first National Park Service Director, helped establish protection for this unique landscape
• Trace fossils visible in the petrified wood show evidence of ancient insect activity
• Distinctive badlands formations throughout the park display colorful erosion patterns where vegetation cannot grow
• The mineralized logs are primarily composed of silica and quartz, causing them to fracture differently than wood

If you enjoyed that short walk through the Giant Logs Trail here in the Rainbow Forest Complex at Petrified National Forest National Park near Holbrook, Arizona, please give it a thumbs up and consider leaving a comment. We'll see you out on the trail.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Petrified Rainbow Forest Museum at Petrified
Forest National Park.
This is the Giant Logs Trail.
You might ask yourself how didthese pieces of wood become
petrified and turn from wood tostone?
It's a long, complicatedprocess that took millions of

(00:20):
years.
It's similar to fossilizationOrganic material was replaced
with minerals, which becamestone.
On our second stop we haveStephen Mather, who was the
first director of the NationalPark Service, created in 1916.
He was first director and hesaid a good citizen tours the
national parks, born marketer,promoter and a natural for the

(00:43):
position of National ParkDirector.
Okay, as you walk up this trail, you can see Mathers Plaque
over there, the ancient riverbedthat we're walking on.
Looking over here, you can seesome really big pieces of
petrified wood and the entireRainbow Forest complex.
This was built in the 1930s bythe CCC, the Civilian

(01:04):
Conservation Corps, which was anagency created by President
Franklin Roosevelt, fdr, to giveyoung men a job.
During the Great Depressionthere was not a lot going on,
but CCC did a lot for resourceconservation throughout the
nation.
This is one of their projects.
So, as I'm standing here,standing on a layer of sandstone

(01:30):
that is much older than themesa to the north of where
you're looking.
Think about the differentlayers that were laid down.
The oldest layers were moretoward the bottom, the youngest
layers on the top.
Pretty interesting how each ofthose developed under a
different environment.
This particular tree is referredto as Old Faithful Biggest one

(01:50):
on the trail, I believe, maybethe biggest one in the park.
The first Park Superintendent'swife in 1924 referred to this
as the Old Faithful of the park,similar to Old Faithful, geyser
and Yellowstone in Calix are adistinctive feature the name
stuck after a number of names.
In 1962, lightning struck thisand broke it.

(02:13):
The Park Service at that timeput it back together and
cemented it with a retainingwall so it wouldn't collapse.
Nowadays they would not havedone that.
The times have changed.
What a huge marble to check out.
If you see here there's knotson the tree indicating where

(02:36):
benches were.
That determines the shape ofthe tree.
That's what we realize, atleast from a theoretical
perspective, what these treesmay have looked like as far as
their growth form.
Pretty interesting to thinkabout A wild view up here.
Yeah, if you look up the hillhere there's a large log.

(02:58):
It looks like it's been cut theweight of dirt from that hill
on top there.
Of course it's eroding andweathering as time goes on.
You can see little channelsright there in that dirt
underneath the log, where wateris running.
You have the weight of the dirtitself, causing the log to

(03:20):
fracture.
This is not made of wood, it'smade of minerals.
It's silica, quartz.
It fractures black chalk Isn'tthat interesting.
They determined that these treesfound here are actually ancient
conifers, similar to modernpines.
They had a deep taproot whichprotects against drought and

(03:41):
also provides stability.
You can see here this axis isvery bottom of the trunk.
This part would be the taproom.
As we near the end of the trail, we have some badlands.
Badlands are all over theAmerican West.
Formed in soft rock stratawhere vegetation cannot take
hold, they form all thesemagnificent shapes and colors.

(04:05):
For this last stop on the trail,we have what are called trace
fossils.
What they are is actuallyevidence of fossilized activity
when the animals were alive.
These narrow little tubelooking things all over this
tree were where ancient insectsand other arthropods were

(04:27):
feeding on the tree, similar tomodern insects that get into
pine trees.
Pretty cool that you canactually see that on there.
Most fossils you think of asevidence of an animal or an
organism's death, but in thiscase trace fossils, which
includes tubules like this,footprints or tracks, feces.

(04:51):
They call those trace fossilsbecause they form the evidence
for when those animals werealive.
Cool, hope you enjoyed thatshort walk through the giant
logs trail here in the RainbowForest Complex, which is in the
south end of Petrified NationalForest National Park near

(05:12):
Holbrook, arizona.
If you did, make sure you giveit a thumbs up, think about
leaving a comment and we'll seeyou out on the trail.
Bye.