Located in eastern Arizona on the souther edge of the Colorado Plateau, the Petrified Forest National Park has one of the largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood in the world.
Protected as a national monument in 1906, the Petrified Forest National Park contains the petrified remains of 225 million year old trees from the Late Triassic period.
Adjacent to the fallen petrified forest are the red multi-hued badlands of the Painted Desert and the blue tones of the Blue Mesa area caused by millions of years of deposition, uplift, and erosion.
It is illegal to collect petrified wood samples with in the park but there is plenty available in the nearby towns in sizes that are hard to imagine. Polished slabs of petrified wood six feet in diameter can be purchased to use as table tops. They are amazingly beautiful.