The fossil forest that was first brought to scientific attention is on the northern slope of Amethyst Mountain, opposite the mouth of Soda Butte Creek, 12 miles southeast of Camp Roosevelt. The following account, by Dr. William H. Holmes, the discoverer of these fossil forests, shows the impression first made by them:

As we ride up the trail that meanders the smooth river bottom [Lamar River] we have but to turn our attention to the cliffs on the right hand to discover a multitude of the bleached trunks of the ancient forests. In the steeper middle portion of the mountain face, rows of upright trunks stand out on the ledges like the columns of a ruined temple. On the more gentle slopes farther down, but where it is still too steep to support vegetation, save a few pines, the petrified trunks fairly cover the surface, and were at first supposed by us to be shattered remains of a recent forest.[2]

These trunks may easily be seen from the road along the Lamar River, about a mile away. They stand upright—as Holmes has said, like the pillars of some ruined temple—and a closer view shows that there is a succession of these forests, one above another. In the foothills and several hundred feet above the valley there is a perpendicular wall of volcanic breccia, which in some places attains a height of nearly 100 feet. The fossil trunks may be seen in this wall in many places, all of them standing upright, in the position in which they grew. Some of these trunks, which are 2 to 4 feet in diameter and 20 to 40 feet high, are so far weathered out of the rock as to appear just ready to fall: others are only slightly exposed: niches mark the places from which others have already fallen: and the foot of the cliff is piled high with fragments of various sizes.