Escalante Petrified Forest State Park in southern Utah preserves a mesa-top fossil landscape where petrified logs weather from rock above Wide Hollow Reservoir. About 135 to 155 million years ago, this area was an ancient floodplain where river-carried conifer trees were buried in mud during floods; groundwater later replaced the wood with silica, creating colorful agate-like fossils that erosion eventually exposed. The region was named in 1872 during John Wesley Powell’s survey, the reservoir was built in 1954, and the park opened in 1976 to help protect fossil wood from collecting. Trails, wildlife habitat, fishing, and the long-lived legend of a petrified wood curse also shape the site’s identity.