Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How large is Petrified Forest National Park?
Petrified Forest National Park is an American national park in Navajo and Apache counties in northeastern Arizona. Named for its large deposits of petrified wood, the fee area of the park covers about 230 square miles (600 square kilometers), encompassing semi-desert shrub steppe as well as highly eroded and colorful badlands. The park's headquarters is about 26 miles (42km) east of Holbrook along Interstate 40 (I-40), which parallels the BNSF Railway's Southern Transcon, the Puerco River, and historic U.S. Route 66, all crossing the park roughly east–west. The site, the northern part of which extends into the Painted Desert, was declared a national monument in 1906 and a national park in 1962. The park received 627,757 recreational visitors in 2017. Typical visitor activities include sightseeing, photography, hiking, and backpacking.
At Puerco Pueblo and many other sites within the park, petroglyphs—images, symbols, or designs—have been scratched, pecked, carved, or incised on rock surfaces, often on a patina known as desert varnish. Most of the petroglyphs in Petrified Forest National Park are thought to be between 650 and 2,000 years old.[26]
Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park/Wanapum Recreational Area is a geologic preserve and public recreation area covering on the western shoreline of the Columbia River's Wanapum Reservoir at Vantage, Washington. Petrified wood was discovered in the region in the early 1930s, which led to creation of the state park as a national historic preserve. Over 50 species are found petrified at the site, including ginkgo, sweetgum, redwood, Douglas fir, walnut, spruce, elm, maple, horse chestnut, cottonwood, magnolia, madrone, sassafras, yew, and witch hazel.
The Jaramillo Petrified Forest National Park is a protected area of petrified forest located in the Deseado Department, in the northeast of Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. Formerly part of the site was a natural monument, established in 1954 and known as the Petrified Forest Natural Monument, covering about . This area has remnants of a forest preserved in stone, that had been growing on the site before the upthrust of the Andes some 150 million years ago. In December 2012, further land was added and the protected area was reclassified as a national park with a total area of .
On September 24, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower as the first National Monument. Devils Tower is a Wyoming landmark, a high tower of rock, visible for nearly . It has been a guidepost and a religious site. In December of that year, three more National Monuments were created. El Morro, New Mexico, is a wayside in the rugged desert lands used by Indians settlers and travelers for centuries as a watering hole and a place to leave their marks. The site includes prehistoric petroglyphs and hundreds of inscriptions from 17th century Spanish explorers and 19th century American emigrants and settlers. Montezuma Castle, Arizona, is one of the best preserved cliff dwellings. Petrified Forest, Arizona, is world-renowned for its petrified wood, Indian ruins and petroglyphs. Three of these original National Monuments later became the core of National Parks. Mukuntuweap became Zion, Sieur de Monts grew into Acadia, and Petrified Forest which was expanded by Congress to become a National Park of the same name. Three of the smaller areas were later abolished, those being Lewis and Clark Caverns, Shoshone Cavern, and Papago Saguaro.
Southern Arizona was uplifted and experienced volcanic eruptions, which deposited high silica ash to the north as the Chinle Formation, which created the petrified wood of Petrified Forest National Park. Through the Jurassic, a large coastal desert similar to the modern Sahara or Namib desert occupied northern Arizona into Utah. Volcanic material is interbedded with dune sandstones in the Santa Rita Mountains, to the south of Tucson and correlate with the Aztec Sandstone and Navaja Sandstone, spanning northern Arizona to Zion National Park.
Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest (part) Navajo National Monument Petrified Forest National Park (part)
Northeast Arizona is arid, largely free of greenery, and characterized by hills, mesas, buttes, cliffs, and canyons. The windy stony plains of the Petrified Forest National Park exhibits parts of the barren colorful Painted Desert as well as preserved Native American petroglyphs. Northeast Arizona is also home to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and Four Corners Monument.
Rain is heaviest from July through September, when about half of the park's annual average precipitation falls during short, violent thunderstorms.[20] August is generally the wettest month.[19] At an elevation of more than 5,000 feet (1,500m),[3] Petrified Forest National Park has a chance of light snow from October through March, although snow cover rarely persists.[20] The average relative humidity of the area is well below 50percent and at times less than 15percent.[18]
More than 600 archeological sites have been found inside the boundaries of Petrified Forest National Park. Evidence suggests that the earliest inhabitants of the park arrived at least 8,000 years ago. Two Folsom-type spear points, the earliest artifacts of Paleo-Indians found in the park, are at least that old. Between 6000BCE and 1CE, the Archaic–Early Basketmaker Era, nomadic groups established seasonal camps in the Petrified Forest from which they hunted small game such as rabbits, pronghorn antelope, and deer and harvested seeds from Indian ricegrass and other wild plants. Around 150BCE, they began to grow corn in the area. By 1CE, as their farming techniques improved, some built houses in the Petrified Forest and began to stay there year-round.[21]
Four National Parks can be accessed on the highway, Grand Canyon National Park, Petrified Forest National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and Carlsbad Caverns National Park. It also passes through the San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountains in Arizona.
Much of the Painted Desert within Petrified Forest National Park is protected as Petrified Forest National Wilderness Area, where motorized travel is limited. Nonetheless, the park offers both easy and longer hikes into the colored hills. The Painted Desert continues north into the Navajo Nation, where off-road travel is allowed by permit.
The National Park is referenced in the film The Petrified Forest (1936) and the play of the same name by Robert E. Sherwood. The film starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart is set at a diner and gas station near the Forest.[51]
The park's earliest human inhabitants arrived at least 8,000 years ago. By about 2,000 years ago, they were growing corn in the area and shortly thereafter building pit houses in what would become the park. Later inhabitants built above-ground dwellings called pueblos. Although a changing climate caused the last of the park's pueblos to be abandoned by about 1400CE, more than 600 archeological sites, including petroglyphs, have been discovered in the park. In the 16thcentury, Spanish explorers visited the area, and by the mid-19thcentury a U.S. team had surveyed an east–west route through the area where the park is now located and noted the petrified wood. Later, roads and a railway followed similar routes and gave rise to tourism and, before the park was protected, to large-scale removal of fossils. Theft of petrified wood remains a problem in the 21stcentury.
Increasing tourist and commercial interest in petrified wood during the late 19thcentury began to alarm residents of the region. In 1895, the Arizona Territorial Legislature asked the U.S. Congress to create a petrified forest national park. Although this first attempt failed, in 1906 the Antiquities Act signed by President Theodore Roosevelt was used to create the Petrified Forest National Monument. Between 1934 and 1942, the federal Civilian Conservation Corps built road, trails, and structures in the monument, and the government acquired additional land in the Painted Desert section. The monument became a national park in 1962. Six years after the signing of the Wilderness Act in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, wilderness areas (where human activity is limited), were designated in the park. In 2004, President George W. Bush signed a bill authorizing the eventual expansion of the park from 93,353acres (about 146mi2 or 378km2) to 218,533acres (about 341mi2 or 884km2).[5] Theft of petrified wood is still a problem. Despite a guard force of seven National Park Service rangers, fences, warning signs, and the threat of a $325fine, an estimated 12 short tons (11,000kg) of the fossil wood is stolen from the Petrified Forest every year.[27]
Petrified Forest National Park straddles the border between Apache County and Navajo County in northeastern Arizona. The park is about 30 miles (48km) long from north to south, and its width varies from a maximum of about 12 miles (19km) in the north to a minimum of about 1 mile (1.6km) along a narrow corridor between the north and south, where the park widens again to about 4 to 5 miles (6 to 8km).[9]
Seven kinds of amphibians, which drink no water but absorb it through their permeable skins, have been identified in Petrified Forest National Park. Tiger salamanders, found in grassland and near major drainages, are the only salamander species known in Arizona. Woodhouse’s toads, which are seldom seen, are the largest toads in the park. They like grasslands, riparian corridors, and developed areas. Red-spotted toads, most active in the rainy season, July through September, are found in rocky areas near streams and in canyons. The Great Plains toad, the most common toad in the park, prefers grasslands. Resident spadefoot toads include the New Mexico, plains, and Couch's varieties.[34]
The Painted Desert is a United States desert of badlands in the Four Corners area running from near the east end of Grand Canyon National Park and southeast into Petrified Forest National Park. It is most easily accessed in the north portion of Petrified Forest National Park. The Painted Desert is known for its brilliant and varied colors, that not only include the more common red rock, but even shades of lavender.
In October 1965, the National Park Service designated the Ginkgo Petrified Forest as a National Natural Landmark. Petrified wood was named the Washington state gem by the state legislature in 1975.
The main attraction of the Puyango Petrified Forest are the petrified trees of the Araucarioxylon genus. The fossils are about 100 million years old and are perhaps the largest collection of petrified wood in the world; The largest specimen is 2 m in diameter and 15 m in length. There are also fossils of leaves corresponding to four genera of primitive plants resembling the present ferns and palms. According to Robert E. Shoemaker, a noted paleobotanist who studied the area between 1975 and 1976, the amount of petrified trunks contained in such a compact area represent one of the largest collections of this type in the world, comparable perhaps to Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park in the U.S.
The upright fossil trees of the Gallatin Petrified Forest in the Gallatin Range and the Yellowstone Petrified Forest at Amethyst Mountain and Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone National Park, occur buried within the lahars and other volcanic deposits comprising the Eocene Lamar River Formation as the result of periods of rapid sedimentation associated with explosive volcanism. This type of volcanism generates and deposits large quantities of loose volcanic material as a blanket over the slope of a volcano, as happened during the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Both during and for years after a period of volcanism, lahars and normal stream activity wash this loose volcanic material downslope. These processes result in the rapid burial of large areas of the surrounding countryside beneath several meters of sediment, as directly observed during the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. As with modern lahar deposits, the sedimentary layers containing upright trees of the Yellowstone petrified forest are discontinuous and very limited in areal extent. Individual layers containing upright trees and individual buried forests occupy only a very small fraction of the total area of Yellowstone National Park.
In Petrified Forest National Park, most of the logs in the park retained their original external form during petrification but lost their internal structure. However, a small fraction of the logs and most of the park's petrified animal bones have cells and other spaces that are mineral-filled but still retain much of their original organic structure. With these permineralized fossils, it is possible to study the cellular make-up of the original organisms with the aid of a microscope. Other organic matter—typically leaves, seeds, cones, pollen grains, spores, small stems, and fish, insect, and animal remains—have been preserved in the park as compression fossils, flattened by the weight of the sediments above until only a thin film remains in the rock.[16]
A survey conducted in 2006 identified 216 species of birds known to have occurred in Petrified Forest National Park since the park became a protected area in 1906. Of those, 33 species breed within the park, 6 other species probably do, and 18 species live in the park year-round. Thirty-five species live in the park only during the summer and 11 species only during the winter. The greatest diversity of birds occurs during fall and winter migrations.[35]
A succession of volcanic-ash-rich mudstone and sandstone with a thickness of make up the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle, which was deposited by lakes, highly sinuous rivers and on the surrounding floodplains. This is the same bright, multicolored part of the Chinle that is exposed in Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert. Petrified wood is, of course, also common in this member.
This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, United States. The locations of National Register properties and districts for which the latitude and longitude coordinates are included below, may be seen in a Google map.