Buried treasure

BURIED TREASURE

BURIED TREASURE

$135.00 £110.00 €120.00

www.officinalibraria.com ISBN 88-99765-02-6

9

788899 765026

|2|

|7|

|14|

|58|

C

A

T

A

L

O

G

|1| Sequoia with forty-five knotholes, 49" × 168".

McDonald Ranch, Oregon.

Ralph holding Scruffy.

|2| Araucaria pine, 38" × 24". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

It’s unusual to see black-and-white specimens.

This is a nice, solid piece with big areas of white, from the Paulsell Ranch. The amazing thing about color is that you might find a log right next to this one that’s red. Two trees of the same species fall down and turn to petrified wood and one ends up red and the other white. You can’t figure it out.

Top portion of a giant log, originally 200' above ground.*

* All the quotes under the didactic information are from Ralph Thompson.

|4| Araucaria pine, 51" × 32". Fitzgerald Ranch, Holbrook, Arizona.

|3| Araucaria pine, 72" × 30". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

|5| Elm from Claro Formation, 47" × 37". Foreman Ranch, Antelope, Oregon.

|6| Araucaria pine, 69" × 32". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

An elm tree from the Foreman Ranch in Oregon, the only one I’ve ever seen. It is very large, with a beautiful tone, annual rings, and no holes—a very complete specimen.

|7| Oak, 56" × 49". Stinking Water Creek, Oregon.

This oak comes from an area in far eastern Oregon called the Stinking Water Creek, a place many people go to look for petrified wood. You can find big chunks there, but I got this one— about eight feet long— because somebody called me and said they had found it. I went there with a backhoe and started digging and we spent about a week to get it out.

|8| Araucaria pine, Rainbow Board, 37" × 38".

Found just west of the Petrified Forest National Park fence, Arizona.

This is from the base of the same big tall tree [44] on the Fitzgerald Ranch. We really had to wrestle this one out of the ground with heavy equipment; it took almost a week to cut through it to get one slice.

276

|9| Psaronius specimen, 35" × 17". Ohio.

This piece is not really petrified wood; it’s a sort of vine, from Ohio, a precursor to petrified wood and about 300 million years old. I bought this from a guy who had brought it to Tucson. When Herb Zuhl saw it, he said “buy it and we’ll get a few slices".

|10| Araucaria pine, Rainbow Colors, 67" × 39".

Paulsell Ranch, Arizona

|11| Douglas fir, 37" × 35". Vantage, Washington.

This is a Douglas fir from Vantage in Washington State, found by Herb Zuhl some thirthy years ago.

He brought it to a lumberyard but overnight somebody broke in and took pieces and there has been controversy ever since, with pieces showing up here and there. This piece is very prized and special because it is so large, and has beautiful characteristics—you see the rings, the colors, and the symmetry. Northwest wood like this is really precious stuff.

|13| Cycad, 32" (h.), Argentina.

|14| Araucaria pine, 96" × 38". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

A 200-million-year old cycad —actually, a plant— from Argentina. They are part of my cycad collection. Pieces like this are very rare.

|16| Araucaria pine, Giant Brown, 89" × 49".

Eastern Arizona.

|12| Araucaria pine, 34" × 30". Paulsell Ranch, East of the Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.

An almost perfect round.

|15| Araucaria pine, 37" × 24". Kanab, Utah.

Fracture-free.

|17| Conglomerate of pine cones in matrix, 36" × 22". Argentina

These brown-tone pieces [see also nos. 28, 46, and 51] are known as Navajo Wood, from an area in Arizona about twenty to thirty miles east of the Petrified Forest. They are very large and tend to be quite solid and without holes and they polish up pretty nicely.

|18| Araucaria pine, 21" × 15" × 18". Fitzgerald Ranch, Holbrook, Arizona.

These [with no. 32] are colorful sections of pieces from the Fitzgerald Ranch, but not from the same log.

277

|52| Pine, 38" × 32". Russia.

|53| Araucaria pine, Wallace Board, 75" × 31".

Wallace Tank, Milky Ranch, Arizona.

A German collector sold me this piece about six years ago. It’s from Russia, which is very unusual. I’ve never seen a piece of petrified wood from Russia. I got five or six slices out of it.

|54| Araucaria pine, 57" (h.) complete log and polished slice, Zuni Valley, Arizona. [See also no. 49].

This comes from an odd area in Arizona. right next to the New Mexico border, about forty miles east of the Petrified Forest National Park, in a place called the Zuni Valley. I only had one chance to get there about ten years ago because they were selling off the land. A friend who lives out there showed it to me; it was just sitting on the ground. The specimen is incredibly solid and without fractures, but there are knots and a small, strange indentation that looks like a dinosaur footprint!

|55| Araucaria pine, 44" × 43". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

|56| Araucaria pine, Navajo Wood, 49" × 44".

Eastern Arizona.

Fracture-free, with unusual quartz pockets.

Fracture-free with calcite pockets.

|58| Araucaria pine, 51" × 34". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

|59| Araucaria pine, Rainbow Board, 68" × 37".

Found just west of the Petrified Forest National Park fence, Dobell Ranch, Arizona.

Fracture-free.

Both of these specimens [see no. 27] are big chunks of pine from the Dobell Ranch in Arizona, near the entrance to the Petrified Forest. I had actually met Mr. Dobell when I was about ten years old and went through the Petrified Forest with my dad (Dobell was one of the first to sell petrified wood). I vaguely remembered the place when I went back years later to dig.

282

|57| Araucaria pine, 51" × 36". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

|60| Araucaria pine, 96" × 49". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

|61| Oak, 59"(h.). Washington.

We cut this log from the Vantage ranch at a forty-five-degree angle. It is very solid and shows off the nice structure of the grain.

|64| Araucaria pine, 39" × 31". Fitzgerald Ranch, Arizona.

|62a-b| Araucaria pine, 30" × 72". Paulsell Ranch, Arizona.

I’ll never forget the day we sliced these open and saw the incredible quartz pockets. I knew I had to save these pieces from the Paulsell Ranch, east of the Petrified Forest National Park.

|65| Araucaria pine, Wow Board, 84" × 36".

Fitzgerald Ranch, Holbrook, Arizona.

|63| Douglas fir, 52" × 31". Washington.

A chunk of an odd shaped Douglas fir from the Vantage ranch.

|66| Sequoia, 817 rings, 87" × 67". Priday Ranch, Madras, Oregon.

This is an incredibly dramatic looking sequoia, about eighty inches wide from the Priday Ranch in central Oregon, where there was a big volcanic action about thirty-eight million years ago. I counted 817 annual rings on this thing, and you can also see the stains from fungal decay. The rings are thicker and wider and healthier as you follow them across the specimen, because another tree that was shading this one must have fallen down and died and allowed the sun to hit the tree so that more grew on one side. This was from a grove of sequoias about twenty miles long; Herb Zuhl had been on the ranch many years ago, and told me about it, so about six years ago I decided to investigate. There was a little outcropping of petrified wood sticking out of the ground. I got a bucket loader and cranes and started digging and excavating. They were very difficult to get out; we had to encase them in five hundred feet of chains, and then in concrete and a steel shell to make sure we could slice it very carefully. It was the largest complete tree I ever cut and polished.

The scalloped edge on this piece [same tree as 44], from the Fitzgerald Ranch, has always been very popular.

283

BURIED TREASURE

BURIED TREASURE

$135.00 £110.00 €120.00

www.officinalibraria.com ISBN 88-99765-02-6

9

788899 765026