Frozen in time, today that wood is beautiful. And so, as Parker explains, rangers occasionally see visitors trying to smuggle a piece home as a souvenir.

Visitors — the story went — were swiping a ton of petrified wood a month, 12 tons a year. Before long, according to the stories, the park would be barren. Maybe it already was in places.

During the 1920s, petrified wood was so common in the area that it sold for as little as $5 a truckload, explained Mary G. Saltarelli of Granbury, who is writing a master’s thesis on Glen Rose ...

The park estimates it loses about 12 tons of petrified wood a year to theft. Somewhere along the line, the myth developed that pilfered rocks will bring bad luck to the pilferers.

Most of the Petrified Forest National Park's petrified wood comes from tall conifers. These ancient trees grew more than 200 million years ago along waterways, where periodic flooding uprooted trees.

Our state’s grove of titanic trees, at least their petrified remains, stands in Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, about 35 miles west of Colorado Springs off U.S. 24.

Byers' petrified wood had the healing curls. When the piece was cut and polished, he could also see a light-colored band dividing the pre- and post-fire growth, a mark that is also found in modern ...

The Petrified Wood Gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. The gallery closes in the winter but can be visited by appointment.