The Rainbow Forest lies eighteen miles east of Holbrook on U. S. Highway 70, the Holbrook-Springerville Road, open and in splendid condition the year around. This Rainbow Forest area contains a greater amount of highly colored petrified wood, than any of the other “forests” included in the Reservation. The varied and decided coloring of the logs, many of which are broken into minute chips, is so gorgeous that it has been given this name. The outstanding features of the Rainbow Forest are the logs themselves, which may be seen in all stages of preservation, some not entirely uncovered, some lying on the sides of the marl hills waiting their time to be let down by erosion, to the levels below, some almost at the top of the sandstone cap, and others in fragments at the bottoms of ravines; the Government Museum, which Courtesy National Park Service Showing work of erosion. This log is becoming slowly undermined by the action of the small stream. In this Museum are fragments of wood bearing at their clusters of topaz crystals, black crystals and beautiful purple amethysts. Of course this vandalism ceased abruptly when in 1906 President Roosevelt issued the proclamation which made this Reservation a National Monument. In the Museum is a register, in which all visitors are expected to sign their names. In this book are found names from practically every civilized nation in the world. In this Rainbow Forest is found one of the best preserved trees with the stump, that has been discovered. It is to the Petrified Forest what the Old Faithful Geyser is to Yellowstone Park. It is the tourists’ friend. This log is the favorite picture place in the entire Reservation. Here parties stop their car and visit the fallen monarch. Almost any hour of the day in pleasant weather, one can see little children playing on this big log. Here they lunch and rest, and here they pose for their photographs. The old fellow must have many happy memories collected through the ages. It lies in the sunlight at the brow of the hill, as one drops down to the Museum. Most probably before this log was broken into sections, it measured well over two hundred feet. It is now about fifty feet long, and at its thickest portion, measures six feet through. The great stump still remains as it was when some terrific storm, millions of years ago, uprooted it in its native forest. We call it “Old Faithful.” A mile or two east of the Museum is the Third Forest. Here is a tangible sign that our far-removed forefathers admired the utility of the petrified wood, if they did not appreciate its beauty. The ruins of quite a castle stand on the crest of a hill overlooking the plains, and one can almost visualize the first dwellers in this mystic land. See them laboriously carrying the heavy blocks of petrified wood to the top of the hill where they are laid out in orderly rows to form rooms. In the meantime, a close watch is kept that neither animal nor human enemy may creep up unheeded. The walls have fallen during the passage of time, but each foundation can be traced. Shards of broken pottery in great amounts lie at the base of the hill. We wonder if some angry housewife fired it out at her better half as he stumbled home from a prehistoric lodge room too late to please her? Here, too, are found the workshops of arrowmakers. Chips, flaked thin as wafers, lie like bits of rainbows about the place, and show that they were broken from larger pieces by human agencies. This, we think, was done by heating the rock wood to a high temperature and then touching, lightly, the spot to be chipped with a feather dipped in water. |