White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1926-07-30
NATURAL WONDERS OF IDAHO

view. no doubt something more than
trees will be brought to light. Great
forests are the lounging places of
ferocious beasts and sneaking rep
tiles, and on the banks of the lakes
adjoining, the monsters of the deep
wallow in the mud and sport among
the rushes.
Generally, the larger the growth of
the vegetation the larger the animal
life contemporary Herewith. The mon
ster grizzly is found only among the
corresponding prolific growth of trees
and shrubbery of the Golden state,
for he must have large trees to climb
and endless berry fields to forage in
else he would not long remain. The
boa-constrictor dourishes mid the
shades of the great tropical forests,
where monkeys and balloons do most
delight to congregate, otherwise his
elongated stomach would go begging,
and he would soon perish. So it is
reasonable to expect that the future
explorer will awaken further interest
in our petrified forest by unearthing
a fossil mastodon or something be-
longing to the animal Kingdom in
keeping with the growth of the trees.
"In future years I am sure that the
bones of the Idaho beef steer will be
exhumed in fossil state, and he may
have niche in the bone vaults of the
Smithsonian Institution, as numbers
of chemically dried and well pre-
served skeletons with the hides on
are to be seen in the ravines near the
trees, and which will soon be en-
tombed in the alkaline sediment of
the wasting hills.
"The ground and debris appear to
have slid and banked against the
stumps on the upper side, and one can
easily mount to the summit The
largest one is IL to IL feet across the
top, and six to eight persons can
stand upon it with ease, as was dem
onstrated during our visit. The most
notable object, however, is the tall
broken trunk, standing in a ravine
below the others. This tree resem-
bles an Egyptian obelisk and is six to
seven feet in diameter and about Is
feet in height. The surface is quite
smooth and regular except decayed
furrOw on the lower side, as if from
the force of lightning. and has appar-
emily been denuded of bark. In fact,
it may be the heart of very large
tree, the remainder having shelled off,
as would appear from the amount of
petrified wood lying nearby.
Between this point and the river a
number of horizontal lodges of slate
are seen we'll upon the hill sides.
They are said to be groupings of coal
veins, as a coal mine has been located
in the vicinity, upon which little work
has been done.
"Three or four miles to the south
west of the group of trees seen here,
there is another fossil field of consid-
cradle extent, many stumps and
trunks of trees being exposed upon
the surface. Those who have visited
it are loud in their praise of it's mum
erous wonders, but it has not been
fully explored. North of Challis about
20 miles, in the direction of the
Yellow Jacket mining district, an
other strip of petrified wood was dis
covered some years ago, but only a
few prospectors and hunters have
visited that locality.
There were several in our party
who had made rocks a study, princi-
pally quartz and wall rock although
they had never before seen such rock
trees. Each one had different the
DRY to advance relative to the growth
of the trees and the time they had
been in their present state. One be-
|lieved that they were not so very
aged after all, as he could see by
the marks of the axe on some of them
that they had been chopped down,
probably by the early Salmon Indians
with their little stone tomahawks.
Another imagined he could see
where beavers had been gnawing at
them. One undertook to explain that
by the geological text the date at
which these giants of the forests
threw the cooling shade of their lux
urious growth over the surrounding
vegetation was just 1900 years B. c.
Still another antedated all this and
settled the discussion by asserting
very emphatically that the trees were
as old as the hills and might even
have been there before the world was
made.
$50 every one who visits this most
interesting locality has his or her own
opinion as to the age and origin of
The fossils, character of the wood, and
so on, regardless of the pointers Civ
en- by the geological finger posts and |
guide boards.
mot being stone age linguist, in
geological sense, l can not give any |
intelligent information as to the time
when these strange specimens of for
est kings took on life or left it off, or
how long they have remained in their
present state. The earth has under
gone so many changes and passed |
through so many baptisms of fire and
water that it is all guesswork as to
the time and date of the changes. No
one knows anything about that, and
worse yet, we have no means of find
ing out, and consequently. one person
knows as much about it as another.
We read books and believe them out
of respect for the authors, and be-