Warning is hereby expressly given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, excavate, injure, or destroy any of the mineralized forest remains hereby declared to be a National Monument or to locate or settle upon any of the lands reserved and made a part of said Monument by this proclamation. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this 8th day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and six and the Independence of the United States the one hundred and thirty-first. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. In 1911, President Taft made a new proclamation reducing the extent of the Petrified Forest National Monument to its present size of 25,908 acres. The Blue Forest While the Blue Forest was included in the National Monument originally it is now several miles outside the present boundary. It is from this section that much of the wood used commercially is obtained. Many find this weird formation the most interesting spot in the entire country. Miles and more miles of blue-gray mounds, varying in size, formed of the crumbling marl have been beaten and blown into a semblance of numberless haystacks. It is arduous climbing to reach the top of this Blue Forest, but the view obtained is well worth the skinned knees and twisted ankles produced by rolling shale. From the highest elevation there is a view that beggars description. One cannot put into words his feeling of desolation, of helplessness, that comes in looking over the formation. Vanishing in the distance the mounds lie in rows that grow gradually smaller and smaller until they melt into the level landscape below. On the tops of these cold, blue mounds great trees lie prone, many of them shattered and cascading their jeweled hearts down the slope.... Here great piles of splintered, colorless wood are found, looking as if the chopper had just left the scene of his labors, the chips of his day’s work lying scattered about. Again, a big tree broken open by the frost, or other agencies, discloses a lining of gleaming crystals, glittering and sparkling in the Arizona sun. Here the great dinosaur lived and died, and from his tomb fossil bones have been carried to universities far and wide. Here the phytosaurus and the stegosaurus breathed their last, and from here was taken the wicked looking upper jaw of a phytosaurus which had weathered the ravages of time and elements. This lies in a glass case in the store at Headquarters, where all may see it and be thankful such creatures roam this region no longer. Here, the rattlesnake lies coiled in the shade of the sombre hued cones, and scarcely troubles to sound his warning when visitors intrude. Overhead a tireless buzzard hangs suspended. No other signs of life are seen in this dead gray waste, the burial plot of the Dark Ages.