ARIZONA / PETRIFIED FORREST

In the eastern part of Arizona, a little east of Holbrook, you find Petrified Forrest Nationalpark. In the park, there's a lot of petrified trees. The trees are about 225,000,000 years old.	Badlands in Petrified Forrest (213 kb)	Badlands in Petrified Forrest (241 kb)
Badlands in Petrified Forrest (294 kb)	In Petrified Forrest you can see what is called "badland". "Badlands" cover large areas in the south-western USA.	Petrified Forrest (198 kb)
The ruins of the old settlement Puerco Pueblo (243 kb)	The ruins of the old settlement Puerco Pueblo (238 kb)	Inside the petrified wood there's often crystals. Therefore the petrified wood are used as gemstones. The railway passes nearby, and a lot of the crystals were removed in the last part of the 19th century. Today there's severe penalties if you remove petrified wood from the nationalpark. Despite the penalties around 12 tons of petrified wood are smugled out of the park each year.
Newspaper Rock (237 kb)	Badlands in Petrified Forrest (154 kb)	Native americans have been living in the area since about year 0. In several places you can find petroglyphs - drawings on rocks - these are between 650 and 2000 years old. Puerco Pueblo is the ruins of a settlement populated from about A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1380. Visited 1999 and 2005. You can find more information on http://www.nps.gov/pefo/.
Badlands in Petrified Forrest (240 kb)	Agate Bridge (281 kb)	Petrified wood (259 kb)
Pieces of petrified wood (268 kb)	Petrified wood (273 kb)	Petrified wood (279 kb)