Lone Star Travelers Blog

There are many solstice markers in Petrified Forest National Park that scientists from all over the world gather at on the first day of summer to study and document.  One is located at Puerco Pueblo, site of the prehistoric Puebloan ruins.  A petroglyph in the form of a spiral, easily viewed from an overlook, is pecked into the rock.  Amidst several petroglyphs that have been chiseled here this one alone interacts with the sun.  On the day of the summer solstice a beam of sunlight makes it’s way through a chasm in the rock directly to the center of the symbol.  Researchers believe this was used by the ancient ones as a solar calendar.    

Puerco Pueblo at mile marker 11 is a partially excavated Puebloan village occupied between AD 1250 and 1380.  A 1/3 mile paved trail explores this large site of 100-125 rooms built around a rectangular plaza near the Puerco River.  In this usage of the Spanish word puerco means dirty or muddy.  Within the plaza are 3 kivas or underground ceremonial chambers.  These ancient people, possibly related to the Hopi and Zuni were the Southwest’s first farmers.  They grew corn, beans and squash supplementing their diet with wild plants and small game including rabbits and prairie dogs.   Due to the large amount of chipped stone artifacts found here (mostly petrified wood) they probably manufactured tools and we do know from uncovering items such as imported pottery that they actively traded with other groups of ancestral people.  A series of severe droughts beginning in A.D. 1215  lasting until A.D. 1299 contributed to the decline in population and eventual abandonment of the site by A.D. 1400.  The culture of these ancient people lives on in the works of writers and artists of today.  Many present day Hopi and Zuni people practice their religion and hold ceremonies in kivas.

Petrified Forest National Park is the only National Park that Route 66, the first interstate highway system in the United States, offering 2,200 miles of open road from Chicago to Los Angeles ending at the beach in Santa Monica California crossed through.  6 miles into the park the line of the roadbed and the telephone poles in front of you mark the path of the famous “Main Street of America.”  Of those days gone by, a 1932 Studebaker commemorates this landmark.

Lacey Point is named for Iowa Congressman John Fletcher Lacey who was an advocate for protection of public lands.  The Antiquities Act of 1906 which protected “objects of historic or scientific interest” on Federal Land is often referred to as Lacey’s Act.  Petrified Forest National Park, then a National Monument was one of the first areas to be protected under this act.  The Chinle formation of the Late Triassic here is mostly mudstone and claystone.  Notice the striking range of red colors due to the iron present as the Little Colorado River eroded the landscape.  The gray colors are harder rock beds made up of siltstone, sandstone and conglomerate.   

Whipple Point was named for U.S. Army Lt. Amiel Whipple.  In 1853 Lt. Whipple was surveying for a railroad route along the 35th parallel (1 mile South of here) for military and pioneer use.  He passed down the broad, sandy wash below this overlook in December of 1853.  Impressed with the deposits of petrified wood along the banks of the wash, Whipple named it Lithodendron Creek (Lithodendron is Greek for Stone Tree Creek.)  Look down here and you will see petrified wood.