“It was a great challenge sneaking it out of the park,” he wrote. One visitor described a piece of petrified wood he had taken more than ten years earlier. In the letters, filchers plead with park officials to return the pieces to their rightful place. Notes included with the fragments describe lives wrought with misfortune since the rocks’ theft. Like the curse of the Hope Diamond or the allegedly ruined lives of those who have tampered with Egyptian Pharaohs, bad luck comes to those who possess stolen petrified wood from the park, prompting thousands to send it back.įor decades, the Petrified Forest has received pilfered samples in the mail, returned by visitors who regret having stolen them. From divorce to being jailed, medical conditions to car problems, unemployment to generally terrible lives, and even death, the Petrified Forest National Park has received bucket loads of confessions, tales of tragedy, and returned petrified wood from those who lived to regret it. In fact, there is a room dedicated to these hundreds of cursed thieves in the Rainbow Forest Museum at Petrified Forest National Park. This curse continues today and is now a part of the park’s history. In the 1930s, visitors to the Petrified Forest began to report that after taking a piece of petrified wood from the park, they were seemingly cursed with bad luck. The Painted Desert was added later, and on December 9, 1962, the whole monument received National Park status. The Petrified Forest area was designated a National Monument on December 8, 1906. Tourist buying petrified wood in Arizona by Lee Russell, 1939.
Millions of years later, the petrified logs were revealed by erosion. Trees are transitioned to stone by permineralization, a process of fossilization in which the organic materials are replaced with minerals, such as quartz, making a “cast” of the original organism. Later, volcanic lava destroyed the forest, and the remains were embedded into sediment comprised of volcanic ash, mud, and water. During heavy rains, the waterways would flood, sweeping fallen trees into the sandy floodplains. The region was a tropical wetland with abundant streams and rivers at that time.
Over 200 million years ago, large trees and rich vegetation flourished in northeast Arizona. However, many who thought no one would notice that one little rock missing or were absolutely sure they hadn’t been seen often find out later it really wasn’t a good idea.Įvidently, they were unaware of the Curse of the Petrified Forest. But does that stop people from removing a piece of history from the park? No! Today, theft of petrified wood can result in a fine. Travelers have long carried off pieces as keepsakes, and in the past, wagons and trucks were filled to the brim and hauled away to be sold.īut, since the Petrified Forest became a National Monument, it has been illegal to remove any specimens of petrified wood from the park. It has been that way for centuries since the first explorers came through the area the first routes were blazed through the region in the mid-1800s and up until today. When visiting, the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, folks are enamored by the beauty and uniqueness of the petrified wood.
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