Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park is a state park of Utah, USA, located a half-mile north of the town of Escalante. A visitor center was built in 1991, and features displays of plant and marine fossils, petrified wood and fossilized dinosaur bones over 150 million years old. The Petrified Forest Trail is a one-mile loop, winding up the side of a mesa to the top where most of the fossil wood occurs. Logs two feet or more in diameter are seen at several places along the trail where it is eroding from the conglomerate capping the mesa. This conglomerate lies near the top of the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation. The wood is multicolored and was prized by hobbyists before the Park was established. The logs are believed to be of conifers that were transported by a river before being buried and later fossilized as agate. A 50 foot log is displayed near the trail head and is one of the most complete fossil logs known from the Morrison Formation. ()