have been an active member of the HGMS since 1982, and have been reading, collecting, sawing, and polishing petrified wood since that time. After my vacation with the family to Wyoming and Utah for 24 days this year, I wanted to share with you what I learned about the most fantastic petrified tree ever found.

This tree was written about by John Sinkankas in one of his large reference books where he stated that it was a petrified Sequoia near Salmon, Idaho of 22.5 foot diameter and 12 feet high. At 160 lbs per cubic foot, it weighed about 890,000 pounds, or about four Union Pacific freight train engines worth.

Ed Clay and I went together to meet the minimum order 50 pound requirement and ordered 50 pounds from the rancher who owned the tree. I have sawn and polished a few pieces. We visited the only remaining rock shop in Salmon—Becky's Rocks—and spoke with her about this tree. She is a divorcee who grew up in Salmon and moved away about 35 years ago. She returned about four years ago. She visited the tree about 37 years ago when a geologist took her up to see it. It was the largest thing she had ever seen.

She then told us about the most common local rumor about the tree: The rancher, Abe Cutler, who lived there most of his life and dynamited pieces off the monster when he got mail order offers for specimens, died about 12 years ago and willed the tree to a hard rock miner friend from Cobalt up the valley. According to local rumor, though not substantiated, this miner jack leg drilled the tree and loaded an excess of dynamite into the holes so that when he set it off, the tree was totally blown to dust.

I talked to the local rangers about the location of the tree, Jurano Peak, and how to get there. Three of the older rangers drew me a map on a free forest service map on how to travel the 45 miles on a switchback road and an up-and-down trail to the peak. They would say nothing about the old record tree (way bigger than the General Sherman of today at 17 feet in diameter), but did mention that they had located several smaller petrified sequoias in the same area.

They would not tell me where on Jurano peak the old location was, so when we got back there the next day, I picked Little Jurano Creek on the southeast quadrant to begin my search. This involved climbing a 1200-foot elevation scree slope with my two cameras and lunch pack. I reached the top of the ridge after about five hours of labor and saw two more 800-foot valleys between me and what looked like some likely petrification. It being about five P.M., I took some pictures and turned back down the mountain. Next time I am in the area—and I plan to go back—I will try to access the northwest quadrant of the peak where I think the grove might be.

This story illustrates the predicament of human nature: the perverse nature of the human creature. This is illustrated by two other record tree stories. The first is the largest of the standing petrified trees standing at the base of Specimen Ridge in the northeast corner of Yellowstone Park. The biggest of the three disappeared during the Christmas and New Year holidays of 1961–1962. An eighteen-wheeler pulled up to the wrought iron fence, and the driver used a cutting torch to cut away the fence. He winched the tree onto the bed of the truck and got away with it never to be found. The rangers installed surveillance and now visit the remaining two standing trees every day during the winter.

The record tall tree, a petrified redwood out of Coal Dale, Nevada on the California border, stands over 400 feet tall ( the record living redwood is 347 feet tall). It was in broken sections, but the townspeople got tired of tourists inquiring bout the tree, so they fenced off the area and bulldozed the pieces over. At least this saves the thing from being carted off by scavengers.

This illustrates man’s rapacious ways of handling nature’s wonders. They used to blow up the logs in the Petrified Forest to get the amethyst clusters. Now most of the available formation that is covered by an agate mining claim has been pulled out and sold to the Germans, French, and Japanese. Less than 5% remains in the continental United States. Anyway, all this stuff about petrified trees fascinates me—and you too, I hope.