Arizona’s Petrified Forest Is Stealing Away

This is the only national park with a fence around it to protect it from the public. The 150-mile fence was built to keep visitors from stealing the park’s greatest resource--petrified wood.

In other national parks, rangers spend most of their time interpreting unique features. Here, rangers concentrate on preventing people from walking away with those features.

This is the site--94,000 acres and 27 miles long--of the nation’s largest and grandest collection of petrified wood.

But the wood is disappearing and steps to stem the tide are increasing. In remote areas of the park, rangers patrol on horseback. Other rangers peer down on wood poachers from low-flying planes.

Rangers perched at secluded spots around the park use binoculars to guard pieces of the 225-million-year-old trees-turned-to-stone. Signs warning “Removing Petrified Wood Is Prohibited” are posted throughout Petrified Forest National Park.

But, the park is too big. And rangers say there are not enough of them to watch everyone.

So each day, visitors steal away with pieces of the colorful wood, a tradition dating back to soldiers in the mid-1800s. The soldiers, the first non-Indians to see these lands, packed petrified wood in their saddlebags for souvenirs and galloped into the sunset.

In his book “Petrified Forest: The Story Behind The Scenery,” Utah geologist Sidney Ash writes: “Bit by bit, pieces of wood are removed by basically honest people, stealing it from all of us and future generations. As the National Park Service continues the struggle to preserve petrified wood, an estimated 25,000 pounds are removed from the park each year.”

Eighteen years ago, David May, then chief naturalist at the park, told this writer: “Honest citizens who wouldn’t think of stealing a candy bar from a grocery store or a newspaper from an unattended stand, are blithely stealing their children’s heritage.”

It hasn’t changed.

In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt set aside these lands for the nation’s Second National Monument in hopes of saving for future generations what petrified wood was left.

The famous conservationist John Muir had met with Roosevelt a year earlier. He told the President that petrified wood was being shipped by the railroad carloads “back East to make jewelry, book ends, table tops, mantel pieces and curios.” The national monument became a national park in 1962. But the pocketing of the petrified wood continues.

Psychologically, assignment here is the most frustrating park job for rangers. Kerry Isensee, 38, the park’s chief ranger, explains: “We are suspicious of everyone. That really is disturbing and not a healthy attitude. People go through such lengths to deceive you. It really makes you wonder.”

As visitors approach the two exits, signs warn: “Vehicle Inspection Ahead.” When they spot the sign, many visitors toss their petrified wood souvenirs out car windows. Others simply ignore the sign.

Everyone leaving the park is questioned by a ranger at the exit station: “Did you take any petrified wood?” Almost always, said Isensee, the answer is, “No.”

“We know many are lying. They have it hidden in their shoes, in camera cases, in the glove compartment, in the trunk. Some sit on it. Some women tuck small pieces into their bras,” said the ranger.

Years ago, rangers would spot-check cars. Because people complained about the intrusion, the checks were discontinued, recalled Park Supt. Gary Cummins. “Now we check cars if there is probable cause--one visitor reporting on another visitor or rangers in the field observing removal of petrified wood,” he said.

Almost every day at least one carload of visitors is caught leaving with wood. If they have just a few chips, the offenders usually receive a lecture on the severity of the problem. If it is more than a few chips, they are cited and fined $35 for up to five pounds, $1 a pound for each additional pound.

If it is a major theft, an arrest is made. This happened a few months ago when three men were caught with 1,000 pounds of petrified wood. They were tried and found guilty of committing a felony, fined $1,000, placed on probation and banned from the park for two years.

Al Veitl, a former park superintendent, has estimated that one of every five visitors leaves with chips, pieces or chunks of petrified wood.

Resource management specialist Carl Bowman, 36, first came here 16 years ago as a ranger. “We have tried to find the solution ever since I’ve been here, and I know everyone before my time did likewise. But we still don’t know what to do,” he said.

Suggestions have been as far-fetched as chaining pit bulls to every log to locking the gates and keeping everyone out. The Park Service has considered installing closed-circuit TV in areas of heavy wood concentrations or closing the park to all traffic except a park-run fleet of conducted tour buses. Studies on how to diminish or eliminate the problem are ongoing.

This summer Doug Scher, 25, a Kansas State University graduate student, is trying to learn how much and how fast petrified wood is leaving the park. He has 60 study plots each filled with about 60 pounds of wood, each piece marked with an invisible dye that shows up under an ultraviolet light.

Scher has taken petrified wood from disposal piles near the “Vehicle Inspection Ahead” sign, marked it and placed it in his study plots. Now the marked pieces are showing up in the disposal piles. Scher believes that by the end of summer he will know how fast the study plots are being depleted, how much is thrown out of the cars at the exit and how much is leaving the park.

All Petrified Forest National Park publications urge visitors not to take petrified wood. “Please do not take even smallest pieces of petrified wood,” warns one. “The small pieces quickly amount to tons.”

A 17-minute film, shown at the Visitor’s Center, describes a forest of giant 150- to 200-foot-high ancient conifers were transformed from trees to stone. The theft problem is also brought up in the film.

In the Visitor’s Center, there is a “conscience” display of letters from one-time visitors who have returned stolen petrified wood with an apology.

A letter from a Louisiana man reads: “I took this petrified wood in direct defiance of posted signs. Ever since, I have experienced bad luck. I lost my job. The pipes in the house exploded, ruining carpeting and furniture. My wife was in an automobile accident. I was hospitalized with a bad back and began losing my hair. I am returning the petrified wood. Hopefully my luck will change.”

A spectacularly colored 93-pound section of a petrified tree was shipped back to the park a few weeks ago from a family who had inherited it. They said their relative had taken it from the park during a visit in the 1930s and they believed it should be returned.

“It is gratifying when someone returns petrified wood. But it is really disheartening that so many people continue to steal the one resource the park was created to protect 84 years ago,” sighed Bowman.