Arizona’s Petrified Forest Offers Visitors a Walk Through Ancient Time

Petrified wood at Petrified Forest National Park

Beneath the wide, sun-bleached skies of northeastern Arizona, a forest unlike any other stretches across the high desert — its trees long since turned to stone, their colors as vivid as a desert sunrise. At Petrified Forest National Park, visitors aren’t just exploring a landscape; they’re walking through more than 200 million years of Earth's history.

The park, spanning over 146,000 acres, is world-renowned for its vast deposits of petrified wood — ancient trees that have, through a rare process of fossilization, transformed into crystalized stone. The result is a surreal terrain where trunks of long-fallen trees shimmer with quartz, amethyst, and iron-rich minerals in shades of red, orange, and blue.

 Trunks of long-fallen trees shimmer with quartz, amethyst, and iron-rich minerals in shades of red, orange, and blue.

“It’s like looking at time itself,” said Nathan Wallace, 41, who visited the park last summer with his wife and two daughters during a cross-country road trip. “My kids thought we were walking through a fantasy movie set.”

The Wallace family, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, said they made a detour to the park after a friend shared photos of the rainbow-colored logs on social media. “We weren’t sure what to expect, but once we saw those colors in person — it was jaw-dropping,” Wallace said. “And the fact that these trees are older than the dinosaurs? That blew our minds.”

Petrified wood begins as living trees, most of which in this region were conifers that stood more than 200 feet tall during the Late Triassic period. After being buried under layers of volcanic ash and sediment, the trees absorbed minerals in groundwater. Over time, those minerals replaced the organic material cell by cell, turning the wood into stone while preserving its structure.

Petrified wood at Petrified Forest National Park

“It’s not just rock; it’s a biological and geological miracle,” said Wallace. “Each piece of petrified wood here tells a story of ancient ecosystems, climate change, and the forces that shape our planet.”

The park is also home to stunning landscapes like the Painted Desert, ancient petroglyphs carved by Indigenous peoples, and the remnants of prehistoric pueblos. For those who want to dive deeper, the Rainbow Forest Museum offers interpretive exhibits and fossil displays.

Despite its name, the park is not a forest in the traditional sense. Instead, it is an open, arid expanse where fossilized logs lie scattered across badlands and hills, exposed by erosion. Hiking trails like the Crystal Forest and Blue Mesa paths allow visitors to walk among the ancient trunks and multicolored hills.

Wallace said his daughters, ages 9 and 11, were captivated by the park’s mix of science, art, and mystery. “They didn’t want to leave,” he said. “It’s one of the few places we visited that made them ask questions instead of just taking photos.”

For families and travelers seeking something beyond the typical summer stop, Petrified Forest National Park offers a window into a lost world — one that still holds wonder, color, and ancient secrets waiting to be discovered.