Last updated: May 9, 2021
Place
Giant Logs Trail Stop #10
NPS Photo/Hallie Larsen
Quick Facts
Location:
Stop #10 on Giant Logs Trail
Significance:
Stop along Giant Logs Trail Tour
Amenities
1 listed
Scenic View/Photo Spot
Stop 10: Who Cut the Wood?
Note: the image is not working right now.
Perhaps you’ve noticed the logs are sometimes broken into very regular sections that appear to be cut. Look up into the hill and you will see who is “cutting” the wood. The hill itself is doing the job!
It takes many, many stacked layers of dirt to make a hill. That is a lot of weight on top of the buried petrified logs. All that weight crushed and broke the logs.
Why the regularity in sections? A normal log does not break that way. But a petrified log does! Petrified wood is mostly silica-quartz minerals. The inner surfaces where they have broken are flat because quartz doesn’t break neatly across its crystal faces, so instead it snaps across the log’s shortest area—sort of like when you snap a piece of chalk.
Note: the image is not working right now.
Perhaps you’ve noticed the logs are sometimes broken into very regular sections that appear to be cut. Look up into the hill and you will see who is “cutting” the wood. The hill itself is doing the job!
It takes many, many stacked layers of dirt to make a hill. That is a lot of weight on top of the buried petrified logs. All that weight crushed and broke the logs.
Why the regularity in sections? A normal log does not break that way. But a petrified log does! Petrified wood is mostly silica-quartz minerals. The inner surfaces where they have broken are flat because quartz doesn’t break neatly across its crystal faces, so instead it snaps across the log’s shortest area—sort of like when you snap a piece of chalk.