THE FOSSIL FOREST OF ARIZONA 



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miles south of Adamana. This area includes the natural bridge already 

 referred to, and a considerable collection of broken trunks which, while 

 interesting and instructive, cannot compare in point of beauty or size with 

 the second, third and Rainbow forests further to the south and southwest. 

 Both the second and third have suffered less through erosion than the first 

 and the logs are less broken, and it is here that one gains the best impression 

 of the enormous dimensions of these silicified monsters. Trunks occur of 

 all sizes up to five feet or more in diameter and sixty or eighty or even a 



Photo by E. O. Honey, 1911 

 Spectacular effect of erosion in the first forest. — The lower portion shows clays of many- 

 colors and on the ground at the base are broken logs of petrified wood. An osprey has built 

 its nest on the pinnacle of sandstone 



hundred feet in length. Of all the deposits, that known as the Rainbow 

 Forest is the most fascinating on account of the richness of the colors, al- 

 though from a geological standpoint it is a wreck. Few if any of the trees 

 occupy their original position of entombment, but all are tumbled about in 

 a confused, chaotic manner, in the numerous gulches and ravines which 

 result from the spasmodic periods of erosion characteristic of arid regions. 



It is to be regretted that the average tourist, who devotes season after 

 season to European travel, does not feel that he can devote more than a 

 portion of a single day to the investigation of these wonderful deposits of 



