Blue Forest Petrified Fossil Wood

How and where to find Blue Forest Wood and how it became fossilized.

Blue Forest Petrified Wood is one of the most beautiful Wood in the World and every collector has at least one piece of it. 

Blue Forest wood is found in Wyoming near the tiny town of Fontenelle (just a gas station) is the turn off point and then about another 10 miles of dirt road. It’s in the desert so it’s hot and dry and always, always windy which can drive a person crazy! There are no trees for shade to escape the sun so the best time to go is either the Spring or Fall when its not so hot. It also helps if your young, strong and have lots of energy.  When you are in the right place you will see hundreds of holes and dirt mounds. Not much wood is found on top any longer, you need to dig to find it. You can walk around looking on top and you can find chips of wood and agate but that’s about it. To find the good stuff you have to dig and it’s pretty hard work because your prize lies about 3 to 6 feet down. And it’s not just dirt but a thick layer of shale and you need a pick to get through it. Then when finally get to it, it’s encased in a hard white algae. And where to dig? That’s the million dollar question! Some times you pick a spot and get lucky but the law of averages is against you. What does work and I will testify that it does, is using witching rods which are 2 brass pieces of 1/8 inch thick and 2 feet long and then bent about 3 inches for a handle. Just like you have heard about the water witching rods, these rods work to find the wood under many feet of dirt. I didn’t believe it at first but I’m a true believer now. I would say it works 4 out of 5 times and that’s pretty good odds! One year my husband and I went and I had just had a back operation so I couldn’t do much of anything. I was by my husband who was digging and 3 nice guys we had met were also nearby by us digging. I was just messing around with the rods trying to find some good strong signals and I had found a good place I wanted my husband to dig at later. Well, one of the guys saw that, asked me if he could dig there, I said yeah, and he found a beautiful forked piece about 1 ½ foot long and 3 inches diameter plus it was nice and clean, no matrix around it. On another trip my sister and brother in law went with us. His wife tried the rods and found a spot for him to dig and he found a great big log about 5 foot deep. He still didn’t really believe it so he started digging in a few other places. About 2 1/2 hours later he asked his wife to find him a place to dig using the rods, sure enough she found another good spot for him to dig and he became a true believer that day. Some times when it doesn’t work and you have dug a hole 5 foot deep and finally give up on that hole, you never know, it could have been there but maybe only one more inch down or to the left or right of where you stopped digging. I have also seen some people use probes pushed into the ground until they hit something hard like algae which some times works and some times not. Another strange thing about the blue forest wood is that there aren’t many small branches or twigs, most are logs. I would guess the lighter weight limbs just floated away while the heavier logs would sink and stay put. When my husband digs up a piece of wood, at least ¾ of them have an algae coating on them. He will try and knock the outside matrix off with a hammer, trying hard not to break the wood, although he has broken some to open up beautiful crystal filled pockets. I have seen some people grind the outside algae to show the blue agate but in my opinion it just takes away from the wood and doesn’t look as natural. I would much rather see the algae left on it. The algae polishes up nicely but the best pieces are algae free. We also use muratic acid to burn off the algae matrix which works really great on pieces that don’t have too much algae on them and cleans them up real nice to show the outside bark.

Another big tip: Do not leave your wood in the acid too long or it turns the blue agate a light gray color. It's still nice looking, just not blue any more.

I have heard about two different theory’s on how blue forest wood came to be fossilized. The first one said more than 50 million years ago, earthquakes uprooted the trees, snapping off some of them but left other trees still standing up. As the land sank, water spread into the low spots. Nearby, erupting volcanoes filled the sky with falling ash which fell on the trees encasing them into air tight chambers. The hot ash dried the wood and heated it to charred wood giving it a black color. As the fossil process began, rain water would dissolve the lava ash into a crystalline solution to fill the empty spaces as chalcedony and the wood as chalcedony stained black by carbon. Blue Forest wood shows exceptional wood preservation with annular rings, bark, worm holes, worm paths, burls and fantastic whole pieces.

The second theory, had its beginning millions of years ago when a forest of standing trees was covered with water. As the water stagnated a green scum of algae began to grow in the water. This green mass covered the trees and as the water, which had a high concentration of calcium began to evaporate, the lime mixed with the algae and formed a hard but porous coating on the trees. As the algae dried it shrank away from the wood, leaving a space that was later filled with agate, the famous white and blue agate. Over the years the wood became covered with sand, silt and volcanic ash. Mineral laden water, moving through the soil seeped through the algae coating and as the wood decayed it was replaced, cell by cell by silica, leaving stone replicas of the original wood and filling the cracks and voids with beautiful blue agate.

We have some wonderful memories of blue forest. The first year we went there the wind blew so strong it ripped the canopy off the camper. Another time I got chased by an antelope because I had gotten too close to the mothers baby. That was scary! One trip our dog Chance got sprayed by a skunk and also ended up with porkypine quills in his nose. I wonder if he has good memories of our trips?

DIRECTIONS: Blue Forest is about 10 miles east of the Fontenelle Dam and approximately 20 miles southeast of the little town of LaBarge, Wyoming. Take U.S. Highway 189 at Milepost No. 61 and drive over a paved county road to Fontenelle, which is just a gas station and a few outbuildings. You take the road to the camping area and drive over the Green River bridge following County Road No. 8 for five miles east. Then turn left and follow the gravel road northward for about 5 miles. Then start looking for all the holes and dirt mounds. Many times there will be campers parked there. Or there are usually a lot of the gas well workers and you might try asking them to point you in the right direction. Good Luck and thank you for viewing our guide today!