Visitors Abscond With National Park’s Petrified Wood

Chuck Dorn has pretty much seen every technique there is for swiping petrified wood. Some sly, most not.

In his seven years as a ranger at Petrified Forest National Park, he’s seen people hide the wood under handkerchiefs, in white Styrofoam cups, in their pants, just about anywhere it fits.

So many visitors take these souvenirs illegally, one study suggested 12 tons of wood vanish from the national park every year--roughly enough to pack four full-size pickup truck beds.

“The baseball, softball-sized ones get collected up pretty quick in sites where there’s a lot of visitors,” Dorn said. But even the larger pieces aren’t immune. Visitors sometimes walk behind hills, where “they get the confidence that they can get in there and hack a piece off.”

In places like the Crystal Forest, a popular visitor spot in the park, only large chunks of the tan, purplish and pink petrified wood remain. Piece by piece, visitors have taken all the smaller nuggets, leaving barren patches between the larger hunks of the 225-million-year-old fossilized wood.

David Barna, a spokesman for the National Park Service in Washington, said that nationwide, everything from Civil War pieces to American Indian artifacts are disappearing from parks.

There aren’t any theft statistics, he said. “But there’s a general feeling out there that it’s up.”

Assistant Chief Ranger Greg Caffey said Petrified Forest officials are don’t know exactly how much wood is being carted out in pockets and car cup holders, but they’re sure it’s a lot.

In the summer, park rangers find 100 pounds of wood each month that visitors have thrown out as they approach brown signs warning them their cars can be searched. In September alone, 25 pounds of rocks were mailed back by people with guilty consciences.

Most are relatively small and come back with apology notes, Dorn said, though there was one that weighed as much as 250 pounds.

Some notes suggest the purloined wood caused bad luck.

In a letter dated July 20, 1984, a man links everything from a wrecked car to the departure of his wife to the theft.

“Superstitious, I wasn’t. However, I cannot explain all the bad luck that has happened. I just don’t need it anymore,” says the letter on display at the visitors center. “This belongs to you and I’ll rest easier now that it is gone.”

But even pieces that are returned or recovered cannot go back to the park grounds. Because it’s almost impossible to know what part of the park it came from, the wood can foul up scientific research if it’s dropped in the wrong spot, Dorn said.

Park officials are now using the recovered wood to salt test plots, counting each piece of wood and monitoring it in hopes of determining the theft rate.

The park and theft have a long history. Petrified Forest was established in 1906 as the nation’s second national monument, in part because turn-of-the-century locals were concerned about the disappearance of fossilized wood.

The wood has its origins in a volcanic eruption researchers believe knocked down trees and washed them into low-lying areas, where they became water-logged and sunk. The volcanic ash turned to silica in the water and was absorbed into the cells of the trees, turning to quartz.

Only 10% of the region’s wood is in the park, and pieces obtained legally from private land are readily available in shops in and around the park.

Still, that doesn’t seem to stop some visitors from taking souvenirs themselves.

“You see them with a Styrofoam cup in their hands. They have four grandkids, so they have four pieces. They’ll stop and see a pretty piece and they’ll comparison shop. And they’ll throw one back,” said Dorn, laughing.

A group of researchers from Virginia Tech found being able to purchase the wood didn’t seem to have any effect on whether people stole it from the park.

In most cases, swiping the fossilized wood seemed to be an impulsive decision, said Joe Roggenbuck, a Virginia Tech professor of natural resources recreation.

“Most people knew about the signs saying it’s wrong. Most people supported the protection of all park resources. They supported preservation of the petrified wood. . . . It’s just at the moment of decision, other things overwhelm the consistency of their attitude and actions,” he said.

The 1991-1994 Virginia Tech study found 2.1% of visitors at popular tourist spots took at least one piece, though researchers were unable to determine the total amount taken.

While uniformed volunteers and other deterrents helped reduce theft at Crystal Forest, nothing is likely to stop it altogether, said Roggenbuck and Caffey.

“The only 100% solution is to keep people away or have an armed park guard and that’s not feasible,” Caffey said. “It’s not like a big evidence locker. We have to provide for the enjoyment of the visitors.”