Sights to See

Stone Tree House

The Painted Desert Inn was the vision of Herbert Lore, a local homesteader. He constructed the two-story Inn on a high perch overlooking the Painted Desert by 1924. The Inn was nicknamed the "Stone Tree House" because so much petrified wood was used in its construction, a tangible tie to the landscape.

For almost twelve years, Lore operated the Inn as a tourist attraction. Visitors could eat meals in the lunchroom, purchase Native American arts and crafts, and enjoy a cool drink in the downstairs taproom. Rooms were available for $2-4 dollars per night. Lore also gave 2-hour motor car tours through the Black Forest in the Painted Desert below.

The inn was an isolated oasis in the Painted Desert. Without connections to electrical lines, an onsite lighting-plant was built to supply electricity. Water was hauled from Adamana, 10-miles south on the Puerco River.

In 1932 Petrified Forest National Monument expanded with the addition of 53,300 acres of the Painted Desert, not including Lore's property. In 1931 Lore had expressed interest in selling or exchanging his property "in order that it could be preserved and protected." It was not until 4-years later that the National Park Service purchased the Inn and four sections of land for $59,400.

The inn has evolved over the decades. Although the original design has been altered, it survives as a testimony to one man's vision in a landscape of exceptional beauty.

Agate House

Petrified wood was used by the ancestral Puebloan people for tools like arrowheads, knives and scrapers. But they also used it as building material. Agate House is a small, eight-room pueblo once built with blocks of petrified wood laid in a clay mortar.

Partially reconstructed in the 1930s, Agate House is located on top of a small hill within the Rainbow Forest. Pottery and other artifacts date the pueblo to the Pueblo III period - the only Pueblo III site excavated in the park. It is thought that this pueblo may have only been occupied for a short period of time because of the limited number of artifacts found and the absence of a traditional kiva.

Would you like to visit Agate House? The Agate House Trail runs 1 mile from the Rainbow Forest Museum parking lot. It can be combined with the Longs Logs Trail for a 2.5 mile roundtrip hike. A shade shelter at the junction of these two trails offers the only shade as you cross the badlands and petrified wood scattered landscape. Water, sun protection, and comfortable shoes are strongly recommended.