FOSSIL FORESTS OF YELLOWSTOITE PARK. 



11 



TOWER FALLS. 



The most accessible fossil forest, marked " Petrified Trees " on 

 the map is west of the Tower Falls Ranger Station and Camp 

 Roosevelt on the road from the Grand Canyon to Mammoth Hot 

 Springs, by way of Mount Washburn. It is on the middle slope< of 

 a, hill that rises about 1,000 feet above the little valley and may be 

 reached by a branch road from the main loop road. As the traveler 

 approaches the forest he will observe a number of trunks standing 

 upright among the stumps and trunks of living trees, and so much 



Fig. 11. — Fossil trunk near Tower Falls. 

 Photograph by F. J. Haynes. 



resembling them that a near view is necessary to convince him that 

 they are really fossil trunks. Only tw^o rise to a considerable height 

 above the surface. The larger one is about 15 feet high and 13 feet in 

 circumference (fig. 11) ; the other is a little smaller. As the roots are 

 not exposed, it is impossible to determine the position of the part in 

 view or the original diameter of the trees, as the bark is nowhere 

 preserved. 



Above these standing trunks lie many others, which the disinte- 

 grating forces of nature break up into small fragments and keep 

 at about the same level as that of their surrounding matrix. Some of 

 these trunks rise only a few inches from the surface; others are 



