What do you call a bunch of trees that are super scared?
A petrified forest!
Washington State is home to a real, bona-fide petrified forest, though it’s much more chill than the last haunted house you attended. In fact, it’s one of the most diverse petrified forests in the nation and has been chilling in little old Vantage, Washington for a cool 15 million years — just waiting for you to visit it!
Here’s all you need to know about the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park here in Central Washington and what makes it so unique!
What is petrified wood?
It’s not a tree that has been to one too many scary movies, that’s for sure!
Man, that joke never gets old.
But in all seriousness, petrified wood is actually a type of gem, rather than organic matter. It’s also the official state gem of Washington, which is kind of cool.
Petrified wood is formed when wood is buried quickly in sediment or volcanic ash. The lack of oxygen in the sediment slows down the decay of the wood, allowing minerals to replace the organic material in the wood over time. The most common mineral that replaces the wood is silica, which is a type of quartz, but other minerals like calcite, pyrite and opal are also common.
Let’s break it down a little more.
The process of petrifaction can take millions of years, though the rate of petrifaction varies depending on where the process takes place, the type of wood being petrified and the types of minerals available.
Areas with high volcanic activity will bury the wood much faster than areas with more infrequent activity. Regions that experience flash floods are also more likely to experience petrifaction, since a flash flood could bury a forest in soil much faster than a gentle stream could.
Areas with lots of water, geysers or hot springs are also naturally more mineral-rich, so the petrifaction process goes faster when these conditions are present.
Whatever the specific factors may be, once the sediment or volcanic ash is saturated with minerals, the minerals start to replace the organic material in the wood by slowly infiltrating the wood through the cell walls. The cell walls act as a template for the minerals, so the petrified wood often retains the original structure of the wood. That’s why scientists can identify the species of trees that have been petrified, even though the trees themselves are now solid rock!
Cool, huh?
Washington State’s ancient petrified forests
The Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park is home to one of the most diverse petrified forests in North America with over 50 species of petrified trees, including ginkgo, sweetgum, redwood, Douglas-fir, walnut, spruce, elm, maple, horse chestnut, cottonwood, magnolia, madrone, sassafras, yew and witch hazel!
Amazing, right?
What you may notice about all these trees is that they are very, very different to the kinds of trees we see in Washington today. In fact, they’re all trees that thrive in humid, swampy conditions, not the high, dry desert we have in Central Washington today.
Way back when, around 15 million years ago, the area around the present-day Columbia River in Central Washington was covered by a humid, wet swamp that was home to a complex ecosystem of lakes, forests and marshes filled with fauna and flora — including an impressive assortment of trees!
What happened to those forests? Well, if you’ve ever driven across the Snoqualmie Pass and down into the Columbia River Gorge, you’ve surely seen the exposed layers of dark, smooth rocks towering above the water. Each of those layers is a flow of lava that erupted from the ground, oozed all over the surface and hardened into solid rock — and there are a ton of these layers!
It was a lava flow just like one of those that buried the lush forest that once stood in Vantage so long ago. Luckily, the trees were so waterlogged that they didn’t burn up in the hot, molten lava, but they were buried quickly under a thick layer of basalt. Those buried trees eventually turned to petrified wood, thanks to the high mineral content in the water they once grew in!
What to see at the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park
If you head to the forest today, you won’t see a tall forest like the ones you drive through to get there. Rather, look down along the trail sides to catch glimpses of the half-buried petrified wood sticking out from their rocky graves.
The interpretive center at the park has more information about the geologists who first discovered the petrified wood, as well as the research and scientific studies that have and will continue to be done in the area. Over 30 types of petrified wood are on display there, too, allowing visitors to see just how the different types of wood reacted to the petrifaction process.
Be sure to check out the piece of ginkgo petrified wood, too; ginkgo trees are some of the oldest species of tree still in existence today and have been around since the time of the dinosaurs!
Take a walk through the small trail system on the mountain side, have a picnic in the day-use area, camp overnight in the nearby Wanapum Recreation Area or go rockhounding on the nearby Saddle Mountain for your own piece of terrified, uh, petrified wood! Whatever you enjoy doing, you’re sure to find something you like in this unique piece of ancient Washington.
Plus, it’s only a couple of hours from our luxury Seattle apartments! Who could say no to that?
Enjoy!
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Featured photo courtesy Pixabay/ArtTower
Colleen Ford is a South African who now lives on Oahu in Hawai'i. She loves to travel, camp, spearfish and hike. She's also part of a super cool canoe club and is pretty decent at it. Colleen enjoys Star Wars and also not being cold ever.
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