Petrified Forest
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Fun story about the Petrified Forest
After the thief was out of sight of the town, a cat walked up to him. The cat said, "If you don't take the treasure I will give you all my catnip." The thief ignored the cat and went on.
When the thief was drinking water a wolf walked up to him. The wolf said, "Please do not take the treasure for there is a curse that is worse than you think." Just like the cat the thief ignored the wolf and went on.
Then the thief saw a huge tree with a gem stone in it he walked up to it. Right when the thief was going to grab it, a tree spoke to him. "Don't take the stone even though it is unbreakable and rare. It is only made that way so every thing in the forest is safe."
The thief took it any way. When he took it, the forest turned gray and became stone. When the thief tried to return to his village, he found that it had disappeared. The gem turned to solid wood.
The end. (The lesson is don't be greedy!!!)
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Cool facts
Natural Wonders Research Project: The Petrified Forest
In 1853, Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves stumbled upon a valley in the Arizona desert that was unlike any other place on earth. It was a forest of dead trees, but as he came closer, he realized that the wood was made of stone. Captain Sitgreaves was the first westerner to have discovered the Petrified Forest, one of the most unusual natural wonders on Earth.
The Petrified Forest is in eastern Arizona, south of the Painted Desert and off of Historic Route 66. About 225 million years ago, the forest in the valley there was submerged in a flood of mud. The trees fossilized and turned into stone. Over time the valley drained leaving the petrified trees. The area around the forest is now a desert with some grasslands.
People lived in the Petrified Forest long before the explorers arrived. After the last ice age, starting at 13,500 BC, the land was grassy and wooded, and habitable for people to live there. There are still villages over 1,800 years old in the park today. Eventually, the area became drier like it is now, until only the Pueblo tribe remained. We don’t know for sure who the first explorers to discover the forest were, but we found rocks with Spanish inscriptions on them from the 1800s. In 1853 after the US was given control of the area, the Whipple Expedition was the first group to record the discovery of the petrified forest. In the late 1800s, cattle ranchers settled parts of the area that had grass. Some of the ranches are still there today.
In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt created a monument for the Petrified Forest in 1906, but it did not become an actual park until 1962. Teddy Roosevelt saw that the forest was unlike any other place in the world, and wanted to preserve it. The Petrified Forest is the only National Park with Route 66 running through it. It is illegal to steal the wood from the Petrified Forest, but some people took it anyway. However, many people who took the wood had terrible things happen to them. Over the years people began to believe the wood was cursed. Many people send the stolen wood back to the park with a note saying that their lives have been ruined.
As you can see the Petrified Forest is a very unusual and interesting place. Even though we’ve known about this park for centuries it still has many undiscovered things about it. Even today people still think the park is enchanted and magic.