The Ancestral Puebloans built this one-story high village around a rectangular plaza. Featuring over 100 rooms, archaeologists think the village was home to about 200 people during its largest occupancy. The largest archaeological site in the park, the ruins of Puerco Pueblo, sheltered an entire village between about 12. Make sure you wear sun protection and carry water. At the junction of the trail with the Long Logs Trail, a shelter offers shade, but otherwise, the trail leads through the “badlands” with no shade. Though not very long, the hike to Agate House takes you through desolate areas with no shade. To see it, drive to the Rainbow Forest Museum, and from there you can take the 2-mile-long Agate House Trail. Hundreds of similar petrified structures are scattered throughout the park, though this is the only reconstructed one. Though rebuilt using original materials, the reconstruction might not be totally accurate, though it is close enough to enable us to imagine the lives of the people who lived here. Excavated in the 1930s, it was also rebuilt. However, the house we see today is not the original. Once part of a larger community, Agate House now stands alone on top of a small hill in Rainbow Forest. Archaeologists believe that this was most likely a one-family home occupied year-round. Here, in the desert, surrounded by petrified logs, they used petrified wood to build the structure near their agricultural fields. Francisco Blanco / Agate HouseĪncestral Puebloans built and lived in the eight-room pueblo we call Agate House between 10. The remains of their homes and the petroglyphs they created are the archaeological sites we can visit in the park. The people who built these villages were the Ancestral Puebloans, ancestors of several modern-day tribes of Arizona, the Hopi and Zuni among them. This is also the time we have most archaeological evidence from. This was the start of the Pueblo Period, named after the structures housing whole villages. 650, people built more complex structures and villages, even using petrified wood as a building material, and clusters of stone structures replaced the stand-alone pit houses. However, the site is remote and is not open for visitors. The largest village from this period in the park is called Sivu’ovi and has about 47 pit houses and many storage pits. They focused on farming and grew corn, squash, and eventually beans. Instead of moving away, people stayed and built more permanent villages comprised of pit houses. 650, the climate became what we know it today. Later on, in what archaeologists call the Basketmaker II Period, ranging from 500 B.C. The area was more habitable, with more rain, cooler temperatures, green grasslands, and wooded river bottoms, so this is no surprise.Īs the climate became warmer, people needed more diverse food sources, and they introduced domesticated flora and fauna, and by 500 B.C., they grew corn. The earliest sites in the park are camps left by prehistoric hunters at the end of the Ice Age, as far back as 13,500 B.C. Petrified Forest was home to different groups of people for thousands of years. Photo Credit: Jeff Fromm Ancient People In Petrified Forest However, as I learned when visiting the park, ancient people built and lived in homes in the area. In this gorgeous, but bleak desert, it seemed impossible. I’ve seen nothing like it before.īut what surprised me the most was that people once lived in this inhospitable environment. Their colors surprised me, as did the colors of the Painted Desert. Though it wasn’t a “forest” with standing trees, I expected to see petrified logs in the park, given its name. The petrified logs and smaller wood pieces were out of this world. I marveled at their gorgeous colors on the broken sides, ranging from dark golden brown to purple, white, and everything in between. I had to get close to understand that they were rocks - petrified tree logs. From a distance, they seemed like normal tree logs that were cut yesterday. The petrified logs were even more amazing. But as colorful as it was, the lack of vegetation and of life was also obvious. Never have I seen such gorgeous pastel colors of the earth exposed. Driving through the desolate area, we marveled at the colors of the Painted Desert. On our first visit to the state, we stopped at Petrified Forest National Park. Before moving to Arizona, my husband and I vacationed here.
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