Located in the Painted Desert badlands of Arizona, Holbrook is one of the most famous towns along Route 66. While the town holds fast to its historic roots, it is still very much alive with a population of 4,854 in 2022. One of the biggest draws to Holbrook is its position as the gateway to the Petrified Forest National Park. Another popular attraction is the Wigwam Motel, sometimes referred to as “The Wigwam Village,” which opened in 1950. The motel consists of fifteen concrete dwellings, designed in the style of traditional Native American huts. Old diners, “Wild West” style saloons, and a historical society museum also point visitors to the storied past. The town was named after Henry Holbrook, who, as the chief engineer for the Atlantic Pacific Railroad, played a crucial role in Westward Expansion. Holbrook once described the town as, “too tough for women and churches.” In the early years, around its founding in 1888, there was little order or consequence to breaking the law. Outlaws from Texas and other surrounding territories often started new lives in Holbrook and surrounding towns, finding freedom from past charges and wreaking havoc on less developed and surveyed communities. Violent crime was common in Holbrook, especially gun-fights and theft, as people decided to take justice into their own hands. One of the most famous feuds in the region, the Pleasant Valley War, involved the Hashknife Cowboys of Holbrook–a group of men who worked for the Aztec Land and Cattle Company. In response to all of the disorder, the Navajo County Courthouse–which included a basement prison–was built in 1899. Some people claim that the old prison cells and Sheriff’s office in the basement are haunted, which is not the first claim of a supernatural element to the area.  As the only national park encompassing a part of Route 66, the Petrified Forest has its fair share of lore. The land has long attracted visitors, curious about and entranced by the abundance of petrified wood. This natural phenomena occurs when minerals, like quartz,  invade the cavities in a piece of wood–the reaction giving the wood a colorful marble-like appearance. In the mid-1800s travelers would pile as many pieces of petrified wood as would fit in their wagons and automobiles. It became common practice for anyone who passed through to take home a piece of petrified wood. The Petrified Forest was declared a national monument in 1906 and then a national park in 1962, both of which made it illegal to take anything from the land. Still, many disregarded the law and continued to steal chunks of petrified wood. Several accounts of freak accidents and misfortune falling upon the thieves fueled the legend that the forest was cursed. The park began to receive packages and letters of confession, apologizing and begging park rangers to return what they had stolen in an attempt to “undo the curse.”  One of the last Route 66 towns to get bypassed by Interstate 40, the community of Holbrook is nothing if not resilient. There were a decent amount of stubborn business owners and residents who stayed despite the rapid decline in population and tourism. Nothing if not resilient, Holbrook survived the gas shortage of the World War II years and rose from the ashes once again after Route 66 was stripped of its status as the great American highway. Holbrook carries on as a popular stop for its old school charm and novelty.

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In the 1850s U.S. Army Lieutenant Amiel Whipple passed through the Painted Desert while surveying a route along the 35th Parallel. Impressed by the deposits of petrified wood, Whipple documented the finding, recording the first published account of the Petrified Forest. Thereafter, pioneers, sightseers, and scientists travelled to the region to collect samples of the petrified wood. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt established Petrified Forest National Monument, and in 1932 President Herbert Hoover added over 53,000 acres to the monument. The creation of Route 66 in 1926 brought motorists to the north end of the monument where entrepreneurs had built a trading post; at the south end there was a store. In response to the visitor boom at the end of World War II, the Eisenhower administration funded the ten-year Mission 66 program aimed at upgrading National Parks facilities and functions.  The Petrified Forest National Monument began planning for a new park headquarters in 1956 which was planned to include a new visitor center, administrative buildings, and residential housing. Park Service architects started drafting designs for a modern administrative building. In 1958 the Park Service contracted architects Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander to help design the new feature. They envisioned an urban hub with flat-roofed steel and glass buildings. It would be called the Painted Desert Visitor Center. Construction on a new site allowed for infrastructure growth and improvements throughout the park. However, the Park Service experienced a severe budget cut in 1959–1960 which forced delays on all Park contracts, including roads, utilities, and buildings. In 1959, Park Service Director Conrad Wirth reported that all park planning documents should be completed and stored away until funding arrived. In January of 1961 construction began and was officially completed in April of 1963. In December 1962, during construction, Congress recognized the Petrified Forest as the 31^st National Park. The design of the Painted Desert Visitor Center featured bright white concrete, aluminum beams, and floor-to-wall glass windows that allowed for visitors to see inside. The residential housing located on the second floor highlighted a long continuous window which brought light into the apartments and provided a view of the yard. The facility has undergone multiple renovations which have altered its exterior design aesthetically, though its layout remains relatively unchanged. In the 1970s Park officials started noticing faults in the building's construction which needed repairs to maintain safety. Renovations took place over the next few years and altered the outer appearance, including new paint in a red-brown palette which better blended the building into its surrounding environment. Conservation efforts have allowed the Petrified Forest National Park administrative point to remain open to the public every day.

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During the Triassic Period, northeastern Arizona’s Colorado Plateau was near the equator on part of the prehistoric supercontinent Pangea. Due to the different climate, there existed massive trees and rivers all over the area. Some trees fell into the surrounding floodplains, or rivers, and were buried in mud, becoming petrified over time. The process of petrification is where the cellular structure of organic materials is replaced by minerals. The most common of these minerals are quartz, manganese oxide, and iron oxide, and each give petrified wood different colors. There are fossils of three different extinct tree species in the park: Woodworthia, Schilderia, and Araucarioxylon. Millions of years later, in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the region a national monument. Congress passed legislation in 1962 to make it a national park, calling it Petrified Forest National Park, and in 2004 to expand the park’s boundaries further in order to protect more of the area from fossil thieves and better preserve the environment. Today, the park spans 221,390 acres, with over 50,000 acres of designated wilderness where the National Park Service allows recreational activities like camping and backpacking. Visitors can get information and backcountry permits at the Painted Desert Visitor Center, which also hosts an orientation film, bookstore, restaurant, walking trail, and some hands-on exhibits. The Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark is two miles from the north entrance of the park and hosts museum galleries, visitor information, sweeping desert vistas, and access to the Wilderness Area and other trails. Rainbow Forest Museum is another park attraction similar to the visitor center, but it is more focused on museum exhibition. It doesn’t have a restaurant but does host complete paleontological exhibits with prehistoric animal skeletons. Although Petrified Forest National Park is most immediately known for fossil remains, the region continues to be home for a wide variety of native wildlife. There are hundreds of animal species in its ecosystem, including tiger salamander, toad, porcupine, coyote, bat, Kit Fox, pronghorn, snake, woodrat, box turtle, and golden eagle. Many unusual migratory species like pelican and other shore birds occasionally can be seen in the park. The majority of the wildlife is crepuscular, meaning that they are most active at dawn and dusk. The park recommends visiting in the early morning or evening hours for a much better chance of observing wildlife. The park also has over 800 archeological and historic sites exhibiting at least 12,000 years of human presence. There are petroglyph sites ranging in age from 600 to 2000 years ago. The earliest types of artifacts found at the park are stone spear points and arrowheads crafted by Paleoindians, the first people to have traveled to the region who arrived during the Pleistocene period at least 11,500 years ago. These earliest people were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Eventually, people began permanently inhabiting the area to farm corn. They constructed pit structures and pueblos, and made pottery. Ruins of these later structures and ceramic artifacts can still be seen by visitors at sites throughout the park.

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