In A Nutshell

Things To Know Before You Come

Accessibility
Visitor centers, restrooms, and picnic areas are accessible or accessible with assistance for wheelchair users. Trails are not accessible.

Camping
Campgrounds are not available in the park, and parking overnight is not allowed. Backpacking is allowed within the Wilderness Area. 

Lodging
Accommodation is not available in the park, but can be found nearby. 

Pets
Pets are permitted on maintained trails and must be kept on a leash. Pets are not allowed within the Wilderness Area nor on the Wilderness Access Trail near Painted Desert Inn. Pets are not allowed in buildings, unless they are service animals. Please clean up after your animals.

Facilities and Services
The Painted Desert Visitor Center complex is open all year and is located off Interstate-40, Exit 311. Services include: 

• visitor information, orientation, and backcountry permits,
• orientation movie, Timeless Impressions (20-minutes long, shows every 1/2 hour),
• bookstore,
• hands-on exhibits,
• restaurant (open 7:00am - 3:00pm MST),
• gift shop,
• gas station,
• post office (open 11:00am - 1:00pm MST, Monday through Friday),
• postal drop box, and
• public restrooms.

The Rainbow Forest Museum complex is open all year and is located 2 miles north of the park's south entrance, 19 miles south of Holbrook off Higway 180. Services include:

• visitor information, orientation, and backcountry permits,
• orientation movie, Timeless Impressions (20-minutes long, shows every 1/2 hour),
• bookstore,
• fossil exhibits,
• interactive, computer-based Triassic Virtual Tour,
• Giant Logs, Long Logs, and Agate House trail access,
• limited food service,
• gift shop, and
• public restrooms.

The Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark is open all year, 9:00am - 5:00pm MST and is located 2 miles north of the Painted Desert Visitor Center, off Interstate 40 Exit 311. Services include:

• visitor information, orientation, and backcountry permits,
• bookstore,
• museum exhibits (including the building itself),
• public restrooms, and
• Wilderness and Rim trail access.

Directions

Plane
The nearest major airports are in Phoenix, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Once you get to the airport, you may want to rent a car and drive to the park.

Private Vehicle
Driving from Phoenix you have several choices:
1) travel Interstates 17 North and 40 East, passing through Flagstaff (259 miles), or
2) travel Highways 87 North to Payson, 260 East to Heber, 377 North to Holbrook, and 180 South to the park (215 miles).
Driving from Albuquerque travel 204 miles west on Interstate 40 to Exit 311.

Westbound Interstate 40 travelers should take Exit 311, drive the 28 miles through the park and connect with Highway 180 at the south end. Travel 19 miles on Highway 180 North to return to Interstate 40 via Holbrook.
Eastbound Interstate 40 travelers should take Exit 285 into Holbrook then travel 19 miles on Highway 180 South to the park's south entrance. Drive the 28 miles north through the park to return to Interstate 40.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Getting Around
Travel through the park is by private vehicle, bicycle, motorcycle, or commercial tour only. The park road, parking lots, and pull outs are suitable for large recreation vehicles, including those towing smaller vehicles. Off road vehicle travel is not allowed within the park, including mountain bikes.

Travel time through the park is at least 45 minutes, though an average visit is 3-4 hours with several stops at viewpoints or trails along the park road.

Fast Facts

Theodore Roosevelt created Petrified Forest National Monument on December 8, 1906. Petrified Forest was designated as a national park on December 9, 1962.

The park has 93,533 acres (about 147 square miles) within park boundaries, with legislation in 2004 increasing the administrative boundary to 218,533 acres. Learn more about the Park Boundary Expansion.

The park has over 50,000 acres are designated Wilderness, spread out between the north and south ends of the park. Learn more about Wilderness on the Backpacking page.

Intermountain Basin semi-arid steppe and grassland (shortgrass prairie) constitute the main environment within the park.

Hundreds of species of plants and animals can be found in the park, including pronghorn, Gunnison's prairie dog, coyote, bobcat, bullsnake, Arizona tiger salamander, meadowlark, and golden eagle.

Over 10,000 years of human history can be found in the park, including over 800 archeological and historic sites.

Puerco Pueblo was built by the ancestral Puebloan people, occupied between A.D. 1200 and 1400. Agate House was occupied about A.D. 1100-1150 and was built out of pieces of petrified wood.

Herbert David Lore built Painted Desert Inn by 1924. Using designs by National Park Service architect Lyle Bennett, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) reconstructed the Painted Desert Inn in the late 1930s. From 2004-2006 the building had an extensive rehabilitation, returning the inn to its 1949 appearance.

Petrified Forest National Park is the only national park site that contains a segment of the Historic Route 66 alignment. Part of the National Old Trails Highway also passed through the park.

The Chinle Formation of the Triassic Period (about 225 million years ago) is the main geologic formation of the park. The Bidahochi Formation outcrops in the north, laid down during the Miocene and Pliocene of the Quaternary Period, about 3-8 million years ago.

The brilliant colors in the petrified wood come mainly from three minerals. Pure quartz is white, manganese oxides form blue, purple, black, and brown, and iron oxides provide hues from yellow through red to brown.

Annual visitation to the park is about 600,000 people. You can visit the Public Use Statistics Office website for all park visitation statistics.

Each year, tons of petrified wood are removed illegally from the park, even though it can be purchased legally from rock shops nearby. The rock shops sell petrified wood collected from private land outside the park boundaries.

Weather

Interesting weather patterns and the rapidly changing seasons at Petrified Forest National Park provide a favorable environment for visitors throughout the year. On a cold, clear winter day, the landscape opens for 100 miles in all directions. From Pintado Point overlooking the Painted Desert, the snow-covered San Francisco Peaks can be seen on the horizon.  

Snow and rain occur throughout the winter months, from as early as October to as late as March. Although snow quickly melts, the moisture leaves the colors within the Painted Desert vibrant in the crisp, cool air.

The monsoon season occurs in July and August, providing the majority of annual rainfall. Mornings often dawn clear, but thunderheads begin to form by late morning. Almost every afternoon short outbursts of rain with spectacular lightning, roaring thunder, and sometimes hail cool the air and are a welcome relief from the summer heat. Summertime visitors should be aware of lightning danger and avoid hilltops at these times. Inside a vehicle or building is the safest place from which to observe a sudden storm and its associated light show.

The average relative humidity of the area is well below 50%, at times less than 15%, making even the hot summer days quite tolerable. Weather records show that the average June relative humidity is 26%, while the average August humidity is 47%.

Because clear nights allow for rapid cooling, temperatures in Petrified Forest National Park can vary as much as 40 F between the highs of daytime and the lows of night. Summertime temperatures, from late May to early September, are in the mid to high 90s F, yet go down to the mid 60s F overnight. Winter temperatures, November to March, often average in the teens and 20s F at night with daytime sunshine warming the area up to the 40s or 50s F.

Northeastern Arizona is the windiest section of the state. The relatively flat, lightly vegetated plateaus and valleys do very little to slow air movement. A consistent summer breeze averages around 10 miles per hour. Mornings tend to be calm with afternoon heat creating stronger wind patterns. Winds of late winter and spring regularly reach 40 miles per hour and sometimes gust at 60 miles per hour! Although the summer breeze helps moderate the heat, the winter wind can add a biting chill to the air.

Blinding sandstorms are not uncommon during the heated summer months. Dust devils, small vortices of wind filled with dust, are also seen frequently in the summer. They are created on clear days as solar heat warms different surface types. The up-rush of warm air creates an unstable interface and the mass begins to rotate. A dust devil lasts anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more and may reach several thousand feet in height. In the wide open vistas of the park, several dust devils may observed crossing the landscape on a hot summer day.