The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-08-20
TERRIFIED TREES IN RICH ONYX FORESTS
Vegetation Turned to Brilliant Stone One of
 the Marvels of Arizona--Nature's Method Secret.

William E. curtis's Special Correspon-
 dence of the Chicago Record-Her-
 aid.
 Adamana. Ariz., Aug. S.--Arizona is the great national museum, the nome of freaks and phenomena. and, to carry the alliteration a trifie further, we might call it the land of wealth ana wonders There is no danger of exag- Eeration when people talk or the strange things they find down here, and you need not be surprised at any thing you see or hear of.
 The petrificd forest Is one of the greatest wonders of the world There is nothing to touch 1t in Europe. Asia or Africa, so far as l have, ever seen, and if it lay in the interior of India, or on the mountain tops of Switzer- land crowds of Americans would be rushing there every summeT whereas
 comparatively few people are taking
 the easy journey that brings them here, You get off the Santa Fe train either at Holbrook or at Adamana Station--named for Adam Hanna, an old frontiersman. The latter is near CT to the forests, but the accommoda- lions are not so numerous. Mir. Stew onson, who keeps the Forest Hotel, | can take care of from twelve to fifteen people, however, and he has the most comfortable wagons I have found in this country. There are three petri- fled forests, all in Apache County, and distant six, nine and twelve miles re- spectively to the southward of Adam
 ana. It will cost you $5 if you make | the excursion alone, but if there IS more than one in the party the charge | is $2.50 each. Large parties should l give plenty of notice, in order that | fDlx They can send word to the station agent and he will look out for them. It is an easy drive, the roads are good, | there Is little dust, the wagons are | covered so as to shut out the sun, ana | the trip is no more tiresome than drive through an ordinary park. It IS not half as hard as the same distance over the pavements of Chicago. and you can come here any time or the year with equal comfort.
 i There Is a mistaken notice about the summer weather in this locality. The altitude Is 1000 feet above the sea, and | while the sun is hot in the middle or ] rhe day in July, August and September. l there is always fresh, cool breeze go- l Ing. and you do not suffer from the heat any more than you do in Mich | igan or Minnesota.
 The petrified forest covers several | thousand acres of timber. petrihed by some mysterious process until bhe l trunks and roots of the trees are or solid stone-sparkling masses of bril- liant colors of onyx, agate and crystals | scattered over vast area. Petrifac- tions can be found in many places Tn the Rocky Mountains. They appear in con siderable quantities in the Bad Lands of South Dakota, in Utah and Nevada, but here their extent and mag | nitude are beyond all comparison Tn every respect. Thousands of acres are strewn thickly with entire trees, logs and stumps, and millions upon millions | of tons of pieces, some of them so large that there is no machinery in all this country strong enough to lift them. According to the theories of scientific
 men, this part of the earth was once covered with dense pine forest. Some 1 say the trees were Douglas fir. others 1 that there was more than one Kind oi | tree, which accounts for the great Va riety In the appearance in the petrlh- cations But however that may be, the forest was submerged in sea of chemicals and lay in soak for ages until the fibers of the trunks and roots were turned to stone. carrying the most gor- geouS colors, as beautiful as the jewels | of Golconda. Nobody knows how It happened, but two, and in places three
  were subjected to this chemical bath: | for the petrifled trees lie in strata, with | twenty, thirty and forty feet of sand between them. The surface of the ground in three large tracts Is thickly covered with logs. limbs, stumps and chips, all petrifled; some of them half | buried in the soil. Then, if shaft | were sunk under these, 1t would reach a lower strata, of similar petrifications almost in exact duplicate. In sev- | erai places where shafts have been sunk deeper a third layer. or strata, has been discovered, sixty or seventy feet | below the surface of the ground, which suggests that after the one at the bot ] tom was carefully covered by the hand i of nature new forest grew upon it's : grave. In the course of time that was also submerged in chemical bath and | likewiseI changed from wood into stone,
 and was then hidden under another lay
 CT of sand. upon which third forest grew and became stone also.
 | This is tremendous proposition, and
 while there is no good in speculating | upon the causes. the consequences are | here 1 saw one tree almost perfect | l6O feet in length-and two monsters | lying side by side. were 120 and 12G | feet long, almost perfect, with the bark petrified upon them. Overhanging a | cliff is a log shaped like cannon thir- l ty feet long and three feet in diameter | of most beautiful crimson crystal. and
 near by are sections that have evident Iy been broken from the same trunk.
 The most remarkable thing in the forest, the object of greatest interest
 Is the natural bridge. It is to b;
 found about seven miles from Adam
 ana-a trunk of petrified OF crystaliZeC
 wood III feet long, five feet in diam
 eter at the base and eighteen inche
 in diameter at the other end. stretched
 across d canyon where it fell ages ago | It Is in almost perfect condition, ant
 if you have nerve you can walk acros lit, looking down into a tree-fringe, pool beneath you. The engineers o
 the Santa Fe Railroad Company hay
 built two slender piers of stone unde
 it to support the tree. and have thcreb.
 done the public a great favor in pro
 tee ing and preserving one of the mos
 extraordinary freaks of nature in tn
 universe.
 It Is a wonder that this bridge ha
 been allowed to remain so long. Van
 dals have been at work here for half
 century They have been collecting th
 petrihed wood and shipping 1t East b.
 to cut 1t up and polish it and grind tn
 small pieces to powder for manufactur
 ing purposes. You can see the remain
 of their shop over near the railwa,
 station. A great deal has been sold tt
 museums. A company was organized
 in Michigan to saw off sections of thu
 petrifed logs for table tops. and iti
 workmen succeeded 10 getting one per
 feet slab more than five feet in dlnme
 ter But recently this has all been for l bidden. The Government regulations