Petrified Forest (California)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Petrified Forest is a petrified forest located in
Sonoma County, California Sonoma County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, its population was 488,863. Its seat of government and largest city is Santa Rosa. Sonoma County comprises the Santa Rosa-Petaluma ...
, in the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. It is the only petrified forest in California from the
Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58 It also has the largest petrified trees in the world. The forest is now open to the public to visit after restoration from damage caused by the Napa and Sonoma fires of 2017.


History


Geological history

Approximately 3.4 million years ago, a
volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most oft ...
eruption at Mount St. Helena caused the trees to become petrified in a process that took thousands of years to complete. Diane Erwin, from the University of California, Berkeley, stated in 2012 that the petrified forest shows that redwood trees were once located further inland, unlike their contemporary descendants that are primarily coastal. The Palynological Society calls the forest "one of the finest examples in the world of an ancient forest."


19th century

The forest was discovered in 1870 by Othniel Charles Marsh, who determined that the petrified trees were '' Sequoia langsdorfii'' from the Sequoia genus. There is also one petrified pine tree in the forest.
Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...
mentioned the forest in his book ''
The Silverado Squatters ''The Silverado Squatters'' (1883) is a travel memoir by Robert Louis Stevenson of his two-month honeymoon trip with Fanny Vandegrift (and her son Lloyd Osbourne) to Napa Valley, California, in 1880. Background In July 1879, Stevenson receiv ...
'' (1883).


Today

Since the early 20th century, the same Calistoga-based family has maintained and operated the forest. The forest was bought by Ollie Orre Bockee, from M.C. Meeker, around 1912, for a total cost of $14,000. Bockee continued to purchase surrounding land and acquired a total of . Bockee opened the property to tourists around 1914 and charged 50 cents per person (). When Bockee died in 1950, her sister became the owner of the property, and Bockee's direct descendants maintain it today. It was listed on the
California Historical Landmarks A California Historical Landmark (CHL) is a building, structure, site, or place in the U.S. state of California that has been determined to have statewide historical landmark significance. Criteria Historical significance is determined by meetin ...
list on January 31, 1978. In 2012, the family started to send fossilized
pollen Pollen is a powdery substance produced by most types of flowers of seed plants for the purpose of sexual reproduction. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced Gametophyte#Heterospory, microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm ...
samples to the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
for research. Many of the petrified trees in the forest have nicknames, including "The Queen", which is 8 feet wide and 65 feet long. The Queen was 2,000 years old when the volcano erupted. Additional trees include "The Pit Tree" and "The Giant". There are a cluster of trees named after Ollie Orre Bockee and a tree named after Robert Louis Stevenson.


References


External links

*{{official, http://www.petrifiedforest.org/
A historic photograph of the entrance of the forest
by I.C. Adams Parks in Sonoma County, California Petrified forests California Historical Landmarks Eocene volcanism Fossil parks in the United States Paleontology in California