Sonoma County CA Archives History - Books .....The Petrified Forest 1877
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 24, 2006, 4:59 pm

Book Title: Historical And Descriptive Sketch Of Sonoma County, California

THE PETRIFIED FOREST.

   The petrified forest deserves liberal space in any description of the places
of interest in the county of Sonoma. It is a fossil forest of great extent, and
not the least of its curious features is its owner, Charles Evans, or Petrified
Charley, as he is now called. Charley is a Swede, who was born, well, no matter
when, at all events, a long time after St. Helena buried the living forest of
which we now have a cast in stone, in scoria from its heart of fire. The only
possible connection between Charlie and the volcanic period is that the latter
saw the trees buried, and the former exhumed them, and forms the missing link
between the past and the present period.

   The forest is sixteen miles from Santa Rosa. It was not brought prominently
into notice until 1871, when the land was enclosed by the present owner.
Professor Whiting visited it, and Sam Brannan had a large rockery at the
Calistoga springs from fragments hauled from the forest. A number of persons
came out to see the trees, and this induced Evans to clear away the brush and
excavate the most accessible of the trees, doing a little more every year; he
then enclosed the land, and charges a small fee, as guide, to repay him for his
labor. The trees lie in two tiers, forming a parallelogram, a mile in extent,
from east to west, and about a quater of a mile across, from north to south,—
the roots are towards the north and tops to the south. They lie at an angle of
from five to thirty-five degrees; the butt end of the trees are always lowest.
They are buried in volcanic ashes or tufa, and the ground around them fairly
sparkles with particles of silica. The largest tree excavated is eleven feet in
diameter at the root, and is sixty-eight feet long. It is broken in several
places. The forest has been visited by about ten thousand persons in the past
six years, and all who have been there express themselves as well repaid for
their time and trouble. The forest can be reached and examined thoroughly in a
day from Santa Rosa by J. P. Clark's Calistoga stage-line. Those visiting the
Geysers by the Cloverdale route will be taken to the forest by Foss' line of
stages from the Geysers to Calistoga. For the first six years the owner put in
all his time in improving the grounds, and it is admitted to be, in the language
of Mr. Evans, "the prettiest place in the hills of California."


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

HISTORICAL
AND
DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH
OF
SONOMA COUNTY,
CALIFORNIA,
BY
ROBERT A. THOMPSON,
EDITOR OF "THE SONOMA DEMOCRAT."
PHILADELPHIA:
L. H. EVERTS & CO. 
1877.


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