People can tell only so many stories. To find out what happened in California before people were here, we have to ask the rocks and trees.
Some good trees to ask, my boyfriend and I decided on a recent weekend, are in Calistoga's Petrified Forest. We learned of the forest from a list of quirky tourist attractions. Once there, we discovered an intriguing tale about prehistoric Napa County.
The tour starts at the end of a long forest road, but the story starts about 3.4 million years ago, when a volcano near Mount St. Helena erupted and sent a wave of molten lava and ash into the valley, mowing down what had previously been a sturdy grove of redwoods. With no witnesses to report specifics, it's impossible to say for sure that the lava knocked down the trees, but it's one way to explain how they all fell in the same direction, and uphill.
What happened next sounds like something from the Old Testament: The trees were turned to stone. More specifically, as the broken giants lay buried under tons of ash, silica-rich water seeped into the tree fibers, depositing minerals into the cells. When the fibers eventually decayed away, the mineral casts remained, preserving the structure down to molecular levels. Over the years, natural erosion and geological uplift unearthed the trees.
Though one of the trees was technically stumbled upon in 1857, it was a Swede named Charles Petersen Evans who saw the potential in such a discovery -- moneymaking potential. In 1871, he claimed the property, fenced off the first log and dug out some others. To his neighbors' likely dismay (they already thought he was a little unbalanced), he built a shack called the "Wasp's Nest" on the property and started charging two bits, more or less, for a gander at the bizarre specimens.
In 1914, a woman named Ollie Bockee (pronounced "bouquet"), who was as hardworking as Evans was peculiar, bought it with her husband for $16,000. She threw herself into excavation projects for 25 years, unearthing most of the logs visible today and attracting publicity (and funds) by getting them exhibited around the country. Her son replaced the shack with a large house, modeled after a Swiss chalet, which still stands today, housing a museum and souvenir shop.
Today, a few bucks will get visitors a 15- to 20-minute walking tour of the forest. The loop starts at a plaque, which points out that this is the only such forest in California and proclaims its "wonders," such as "opalized wood, obsidian, quartz crystal, petrified coral and fossilized insects."
The pile of dull gray logs nearby didn't look promising, but we took a left up the hill with our brochure, leaving footprints in the soft ashy ground and searching for the dead trees among the living oaks, manzanitas and firs.
It's not hard to figure out how the Pit Pine, the park's only preserved pine, got named -- it lies in a pit that's dusted with white-gray ash called tuff. Its size isn't impressive, but its presence impresses geologists because it shows that the climate was cool and moist at the time of the volcano eruption.
More impressive to us was a tree called the Queen, which was about 2,000 years old when it fell. The bark structure and growth rings are visible, and it has an oak tree growing out of it. It is power- washed every few years to remove dirt, moss and lichens, and it sparkles with quartz.
The imposing Monarch tree, a coastal redwood that is 105 feet long and 6 feet in diameter, is the largest intact petrified tree in the world. It's also called the "tunnel tree," because it disappears into one. The excavation is a work in progress.
The Ollie Bockee tree is a relatively new sight -- its root ball was only recently uncovered after 15 years of excavation. The Robert Louis Stevenson tree is named after the writer, who visited in 1880 and wrote about the forest in his book "Silverado Squatters."
The book is for sale in the gift shop, and, leafing through it, readers will find that Stevenson was "mightily unmoved" by the forest's sights. He did, however, find "delightful curiosity in the form of Mr. Evans," whom he nicknamed "Petrified Charlie."
For our part, we regretted not taking the guided tour, led by grounds manager David Storck on weekends. After the loop, he takes visitors to a 100-foot-high, volcanic-material-studded "ash fall" with views of Mount St. Helena.
Compared with other examples of petrified wood, like the colorful, mineral-rich types found in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park, Calistoga's gray-white specimens might seem a little dull. Still, we were more impressed with the trees than Stevenson was. And while we couldn't meet Evans, we found "delightful curiosity" in the form of the museum and gift shop.San Francisco Chronicle
