Petrified Forest National Park

We visit the Petrified Forest - Painted Desert in Eastern Arizona News of the remarkable "Painted Desert and trees turned to stone" was relayed by US government mappers and surveyors in the mid-1800s to the 'civilized' part of the United States back in the East. After much plundering and destruction by souvenir hunters, President Teddy Roosevelt set aside parts of the park in 1906 as a monument, and in 1932, over 50,000 acres was added to the monument. In 1962 Congress designated the monument as a national park.