Megan Liston
Patrick Nurre
Geology Of Our National Parks
November 6th, 2014
Petrified Forest National Park
Petrified Forest National Park is located in part of the Colorado Plateau. It is an eerie, rather unsettling place. With scattered branches and massive pieces of wood, it feels almost like a graveyard. It is, however, an amazing place to observe God’s creation in the most small and insignificant things, dead wood! There are many small elements that hold this masterpiece together. The wood has been preserved as a result of chemical saturated solution which seeps into it and replaces the wood with the chemical agite and silica. It all works out so perfectly and yet so unnoticably. It is truly a miracle that these logs have been preserved over such a large amount of time.
The park was made into a national park in 1962. No one knows exactly who first found this park, but archeologists have found the remains and ruins of some ancient civilizations within the park. So we do know that the park has been around since one of the first tribes came to America. We can’t say for sure who first made this park known but the first publication about this place was from the Whipple Expedition of 1853, in a book by artist/naturalist Balduin Möllhausen. In 1853 Whipple led an expedition out west to explore the land. They came across this area and Whipple was so empressed with it that he named it Lithodendron Creek (Stone Tree Creek). Later, a wagon road was built that used camels for experimental use. After that, stagecoaches and wagons often came through that area. Many families set up a homestead and began cattle farms. Ever since then it has become a renowned place where people go to enjoy the amazing scenery and mysterious beauty.
The park is made up mostly of sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rocks are rocks that are formed by the deposition of material on the earth’s surface. They are formed slowly over time when particles form together. There also plant fossils that are abundant in the park for example: teeth, scales, bones of extinct species of fish, clams, amphibians, and dinosaurs. It is a great reminder of the world wide flood since you can see the remains of ancient animals and people. When the flood waters came rushing through the park, it mixed with the silica rich soil. Then when it beat down the trees, it filled them with the silica which has preserved them to this day. Petrified Forest National Park had at one time been a dumping ground for the past watery event. This park is similar to the more well known park, the Badlands. These both have a very mysterious feeling to them, and the look much like very ancient ruins.
Men have always tried to make excuses for the strong proof of the flood, such as Charles Lyell. He began his campaign against a biblical view of nature. It was called uniformitarianism. Saying, “The Present is the key to the past”, he tried to disprove the proof that was constantly around him. However, there is no way that we can disprove this strong proof shown in the Petrified Forest National Park.
My Sources :
My notes from Geology Class
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