Ancient trees dot the Petrified Forest landscape.

Bob Rogers

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After more than a year of rehabilitation, Petrified Forest National Park's historic Painted Desert Inn is now open, just in time to celebrate the park's centennial.

Against the colorful backdrop of Northern Arizona's Painted Desert, the essence of the inn's heyday has been revived with artists and historians painstakingly peeling away years of paint and patchwork.

The inn was built in the 1920s to serve adventurous travelers following Route 66. From 1936 to 1940, it was refurbished in the Pueblo Revival style it retains today. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

"From the road, it's a low-profile building," said Lee Baiza, superintendent for Petrified Forest National Park, "but it is actually a two-story structure with an atrium."

The earthy pink building maintains a subtle style among the multihued hills to the north, but visitors will notice complements that add to the elemental feel of the place. Outside, log vigas top the walls and inside, cool flagstone floors lead to breathtaking views. The distinctive treasures found inside include painted glass skylights, 1930's era tinware light fixtures and reconditioned furniture.

It's been years since the inn, which re-opened just before Memorial Day weekend, has been used for public lodging.

Today it's a museum. Its role in visitor services is to provide orientation and interpretation of the park's unique natural and cultural features. A Petrified Forest Museum Association bookstore sells reference materials and related gifts.

Ironically, the soils that characterize the mottled Painted Desert posed the biggest challenge to the inn's restoration.

"They are two of the worst soils you can build on," Baiza said, referring to the absorbent and active clay and bentonite in the area.

Ultimately, the shifting substrate led to severe roof problems, and with 19 separate roofs, the complications only multiplied.

The Western Archeological Conservation Center in Tucson had a role in refurbishing the original Civilian Conservation Corps light fixtures. The hammered-tin lamps from the late 1930s have been cleaned and rewired, giving off brighter light than they used to. The long outmoded plumbing and electrical wiring is now up to code. The restored skylights feature motifs found in nearby petroglyphs.

Historic photos couldn't convey the vivid colors that Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter used when she redesigned the building in the late 1930s, but park historians were able to recover the original colors from a dining room chair. Under layers of paint, they found the bright coral, turquoise and lemony yellow that Colter adopted for the interior.

A project scheduled this month is the restoration of the murals by Hopi artist Fred Kabotie. The faded and stained murals depict significant events and rituals in the lives of the Hopi people. Visitors will be able to watch as park specialists repair water damage, brighten the sun-faded colors and seal the original scenes of the Buffalo dance, the San Francisco Peaks and a ritual migration to collect salt.

The overall effect of the inn's restoration will be to take visitors back to a 1940s experience.

"We're really user friendly," said Baiza, recommending that visitors also stop in at a visitor center at either end of the park before driving the full length of the 28-mile park road.

The unique Chinle Formation leads not only to the multicolored, namesake petrified wood of the park, it is responsible for the exceptionally preserved Late Triassic Period fossil record found here as well. Young dinosaur enthusiasts can learn more about the phytosaurs and aetosaurs that lived among the now mineralized pine-like trees.

Recent authorization for park land acquisitions will help to complete the puzzle paleontologists have been working to solve about what the landscape looked like over 200 million years ago.

New finds are uncovered with each heavy rain or wind storm; it turns out that the same soils that are a bane to building construction are a boon to paleontology.

The 2004 discovery of a revueltosaurus skeleton is one example of how Petrified Forest National Park is rapidly gaining attention from fossil researchers as a world class research center.

"This discovery is changing how people look at early distribution of dinosaurs," said park paleontologist Bill Parker. Parker anticipates more valuable finds once neighboring parcels are acquired. Excellent interpretive exhibits on early dinosaurs can be found at the Rainbow Forest Museum at the south end of the park.

The park's human history goes back more than 10,000 years in several waves of occupation. Along the park drive, Puerco Pueblo is a partially excavated multi-room complex dating to A.D. 1250. Petroglyphs, such as those found at Newspaper Rock, depict recognizable human forms, animal forms and decorative designs.

Many tourists just come to see the stunning semiprecious wood along trails like the Crystal Forest Trail and the Long Logs Trail. Unique climactic and geologic conditions led to silica minerals replacing cell structures, resulting in the colorful quartz matrices we see today. 

To really absorb the park, try backpacking into the Black Forest from Kachina Point at Painted Desert Inn. A majority of visitors never experience the Painted Desert Wilderness Area.

"A common mistake among visitors is not to plan enough time to really see the park," said Lee Baiza, superintendent of the park. Too often, she said, people will only stop for a half hour, never realizing all the attractions the park offers.