Adventures With Amy | San Francisco 2003

San Francisco 2003: Napa Valley

The Petrified Forest near Calistoga is one of the finest examples of a pliocene fossil forest in the world. Redwood trees of up to eight feet in diameter and hundreds of feet high were blown down like toothpicks in the flow of ash from a volcano that erupted northeast of present-day Calistoga, California, over 3 million years ago.

The volcano blast was so violent that it knocked down everything in its path, covering it all with a pale yellow ash. Giant redwood trees, over 2,000 years old when they fell, lay buried under the ash, slowly turning into stone, until being discovered in 1870. The trees, deeply buried by ash, were preserved by replacement of organic material with fine-grained silicon and oxygen. Modern uplift and erosion has exposed the tips of the trees, and the final excavation by man results in the forest we see today. After a short walk uphill from the Petrified Forest entrance, the first trees appear. It's easy to mistake the smaller ones for recent windfalls, but further up the hill, it becomes obvious it becomes that these trees aren't wood, but stone.

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At eight feet in diameter and 65 feet long, the largest tree visible on the property is called the Queen of the Forest. This tree and its companions are unique among California's petrified trees; they have bark. The trees are power-washed every few years to remove moss and debris, so you can see all their details.

The first petrified tree exposed after entering the park is called the Pit tree because it is exposed in a 15 foot deep pit. It is the only pine preserved in the park. It is 43 feet in length and 2 feet in diameter, hardly a giant, but evidence that this was a cool, moist environment when the trees were preserved.

The park itself was established in 1910 by Ollie Bockee and her family. The Petrified Forest is a privately owned attraction, with a museum devoted to the origin of the fossils and geology of the area. The owners unearth new trees as funds allow, but they do not sell anything they dig up. Admission price is $6.00.

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Calistoga is also home to one of only three Old Faithful geysers in the world!

Water for the Old Faithful Geyser of California comes from an underground river. When this water flows over the hot molten magma deep in the earth, it boils and expands and is collected in large cavities. Under tremendous pressure from the heat, and assisted by a constriction of the passage upward, the superheated water is forced through the fissures and fractures and erupts with an outpouring of steam followed by a fulmination of hot dancing water.

Under normal conditions, the water, the heat and the underground structure all remain constant and for this reason Old Faithful erupts regularly. Conditions which cause deviations from the normal pattern seem to relate to earthquakes. The Old Faithful Geyser of California is proving itself a predictor of quakes.

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