Barbara Jean Smith. age 9. of Cleveland; OH.

What is a petrified forest?.

Petrified means turned into stone. You may say that someone is petrified with fright. Here the meaning of the word is stretched a bit to describe how you feel when scared stiffs But in the petrified forest. the word is not exaggerated one bit. Trees and the remains of whole forests have actually been turned into stone.

America has a number of these petrified forests. Most of them are in the west or southwest. You can find six of them in the Petrified Forest National Park of Arizona You will see what look like tree trunks strewn over the ground. But kick one and you stub your toe. For these are trees turned into hard. solid stone. A few stumps are left standing as they grew petrified along with their roots.

Here. too. you will find a petrified tree‑bridges A hundred foot trunk four feet in diameter spans a crevice 20 feet deep. This Agate Bridge. as it is called. is really something to amaze you.

There is another interesting petrified forest in the Columbia River area. It is among the cindery debris of an ancient volcanic region.  Its stoney trees are mostly gingkos. They thrived there 60 million years ago when the northwest was enjoying a semi‑tropical climate.

Lying on the ground in their natural state. the petrified logs look rather dull and uninteresting. But experts cut and polish them into objects of great beauty. The polished surface shows the rings and whorls of the ancient wood. Hold a piece in your hard. It looks like polished wood and feels like stone. With a magnifying glass you can see the delicate designs of cells and wood tissues made in the sunny days of long. long ago. Leaves and seeds are often preserved in their perfect original form. For petrified wood is a perfect copy of the original plant.

Nature takes long. long ages to turn her trees into stones. Special conditions are needed. so petrified forests are very rare. Chances are. the original forest was buried in some upheaval. It may have been a landslide or more  landslide or more likely a blanket of volcanic ashes and dust. The rest is done slowly by rainfall and running water.

The water laps at the ground  dissolving minerals and chemicals. It loads up with all manner of dissolved material as it seeps along. Bit by tiny bit it dissolves the: particles of the old wood. But it gets; trapped in the plant tissues. There it is forced to give up its load of chemical.. So through the ages bit by bit. the tree tissue is swapped fore the chemicals and minerals. dissolved in the water. In time: they dry out into hard stone. Some petrified wood is made of silicon and some of agate.  Some is; made of precious opal. Most is a mixture; of several kinds of stones.