Leaving the Headquarters area, where the Museum is located, the visitor
drives over a winding road, beautiful in its arid desert beauty, six or
seven miles to reach the Second Forest. Were it my privilege to name
this lovely section I should call it “The Coral Garden”. In this
“forest” are many logs encrusted with coral formation. Some of them have
broken apart and even the interiors are mossed with the coral, soft rose
in color. The ground is covered with tiny round stones, coral colored.
Here many logs are filled with crystals and the range of coloring found
in the chips strewn over the landscape is marvelous. Many pebbles bear
the impression of seashells, and deep in the heart of a section of
petrified log was found a fossilized mussel.
[Illustration: Courtesy National Park Service
At one place in the First Forest a slender column of rock rises to the
height of thirty or forty feet. This is the Eagle Rock.]
There is little of the sandstone cap in this area, and the logs lie in
the blue-gray marl formation. Here we find larger trees in greater
masses than elsewhere. Many of the trees lie piled on top of others in
the coulees and small arroyos, carved out by wind and rain, during the
centuries since these logs first settled there. One big tree, near the
road, is mashed flat its entire length of perhaps ninety feet. Evidences
of bark are plain on this particular log, and where the limbs were torn
off, the grain of the wood is quite discernible. One could spend hours
in this area, spellbound with the beautiful sight.