Painted Desert
Painted Desert or Painted Desert is a place of breathtaking beauty. This area stretches along the Little Colorado River from the Grand Canyon to Northern Arizona National Park. The desert was named “Painted Desert” – el Desierto Pintura – by the Spanish, for the unusual color of the rock formations.
Video: Colorful Desert
General Information
The rocks and soils of the Colored Desert are composed of various minerals, fossil plant and animal remains, which explains the variety of coloration. Red rocks of the most varied shapes predominate here. At sunrise and sunset the scarlet rocks look especially spectacular, they suddenly turn purple, blue and dark orange.
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Reminiscent geologically of many Colorado Plateau parks, this park was once a flood plain crisscrossed by streams that fed majestic conifers. Due to volcanic eruptions and volcanic ash, the trees received less oxygen and eventually died out. Gradually, silicon-bearing water began to seep through their trunks, slowly transforming the originally organic tissues into silicon deposits. The silicon then crystallized into quartz, and the ancient trees were forever encased in a stone shell. Petrified Forest National Park is home to the largest example of such a phenomenon in the world.
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One of the tourists’ favorite sites is Newspaper Rock (“Newspaper Rock”), a huge piece of sandstone covered in petroglyphs. From here you can walk to the Long Logs Trail, which runs partly through Rainbow Forest (“Rainbow Forest”). The fossilized trees are painted in different colors due to the presence of iron, coal, manganese, and other minerals here.
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