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an archaeologist, and a knowledgeable guide. After gathering information from both Hewett and Wetherill, Lacey felt certain he could get Congress and the Senate to approve of Mesa Verde. He was more worried about the Petrified Forest of Arizona (soon to become a favorite spot of John Muir and John Burroughs). Thousands of people there were stealing Pliocene fossils, pottery shards, and petrified logs. These thieves would just leave with whatever they wanted. When the Pueblo people had lived in the Painted Desert–Petrified Forest area, they had used fossilized wood for tools; in 1906, travelers en route to California collected chunks for souvenirs, sometimes by the wagonful. “This remarkable deposit has been subject to much vandalism already, and unless permanently reserved and protected, is sure of ultimate destruction,” Lacey wrote about the Petrified Forest for Shield’s Magazine. “The land is useless for agriculture, as it is in the heart of a desert. An attempt was made some years ago to work these trees up into table tops, but the prevalence of small holes in the body of the finest of the logs prevented the success of this commercial enterprise. Otherwise this great national curiosity would have long since become a matter of history only.”32

Consumed with impatience, Lacey started learning every geological fact about Arizona’s Petrified Forest as if he were on assignment from the American Museum of Natural History. To draw attention to the great petrified logs, he wrote reports, delivered speeches, and lobbied the Santa Fe Railway about their value as a stopover attraction for tourists on the way to the Grand Canyon. Lacey also wrote a slogan for the railroad to use: “Come see the Grand Canyon (the greatest scenic wonder in the world) and the Petrified Forest of Arizona (the greatest natural curiosity).” When congressmen from California, Washington, Oregon, and Wyoming told Lacey that their states had petrified forests, too, Lacey grew exasperated. The fools didn’t understand. Of course, there were other petrified forests. But his was “The Petrified Forest of the World,” in a class by itself. “Yellow, red, blue, white, black, brown, rose, purple, green, gray, in fact, all the colors of the rainbow, are found in these trees,” Lacey said. “Many of them are five feet in diameter and 140 feet in length, and lie just as they were originally deposited, imbedded a few inches in the desert sand.”33

Since the early 1890s Roosevelt and Lacey had made a lot of conservation deals together. They had become alter egos. But Roosevelt had never seen Lacey so stirred up as he was over the Petrified Forest. Lacey even quoted the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had said that the great arches of Gothic cathedrals were a “petrified religion.” And the Arizona Territory—God bless the United States—had the most holy petrified valley in the western hemisphere. Lacey admitted that he wasn’t schooled in the principles of stratigraphy, but he nevertheless knew that the geologic history of the Petrified Forest was worth preserving. Whether they were using petrified wood for tabletops or chopping down old-growth redwoods for decks, Lacey was annoyed by the disrespect that business enterprises and commercial vandals were showing toward the western heritage. “As hard almost as the diamond, as brilliant in colors as the flowers of the field, this ancient forest, which was transformed into stone perhaps before man appeared on the planet, is still to be seen under the sunshine of Arizona,” Lacey wrote. “It should by all means be preserved for the admiration and wonder of generations yet to come.”34

According to Professor Rebecca Conrad, author of Places of Quiet Beauty, Congressman Lacey inserted the words “scenic and scientific” into the Antiquities Act as a clever way to preserve places like the Petrified Forest of Arizona. Here wood had been turned to solid silica, rock, and quartz. Lacey also wrote an account of his 1902 trip to Arizona with Wetherill as his guide, and of how his idea for the Antiquities Act came into focus. The archaeological