...[A] brave old white-faced Swede [having] had wandered this way ... And taken up his acres ... All alone, bent double with sciatica....

Charlie recounted to Stevenson how he had first chanced upon such oddity of nature:

I was cleaning up the pasture for my beast (two cows supposedly), when I found ... A great redwood, seven feet in diameter, that lay on its side, hollow heart, clinging lumps of bark, all changed into grey stone, with veins of quartz between what had been layers of the wood. ("The Stevenson Tree.")

Although Charlie credited himself for discovering the Petrified Forest, an article, written by Charles E. Denison, appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin in 1870 that discussed this natural phenomena.

Also, almost a year before Charlie laid his claim, a visiting scientist gave a more of less accurate geological description of the phenomena. O.C. Marsh, a Yale professor, described the Forest in the article "A Fossil Forest in the Tertiary of California," written in The American Journal of Science and Arts. The article depicted a volcanic eruption a long time ago occurred in the northeast and torrential rains subsequently brought giant mudflows of volcanic ash from the eruption site to entomb the felled giants.

In actuality, the Forest was first discovered in 1857 by a man named William Travis. However, what became of William or Charles Denison is lost in the midst of time. Unfortunately, "Petrified Charlie" did not get to enjoy his new-found notoriety as the Forest's discoverer for very long. Within a year of Stevenson's visit, Charlie met with a fatal fall down a San Francisco hotel's stairs.

Upon "Petrified Charlie's" death in 1880, his sister, Christina Ryden inherited The Petrified Forest, but financial straits and poor health forced her to sell the property eight years later. Several owners, usually bachelors, and a few 'squatters' successively possessed the Forest, living in Charlie's shack, known as the "Wasp's Nets." Just like Charlie these owners charged the occasional visitor "two bits" a head to see "scattered thickly various lengths of petrified trunk".

One pair of Forest entrepreneurs whose story survives was the preacher and the lawyer. It seems that "Petrified Charlie's legacy included a modest vineyard which he had planted in front of the "Wasp's Nest." The lawyer apparently convinced the preacher to join in the purchase of the Forest, so together they might better care for Petrified Charlie's other legacy, the cultivation of the fruit of the vine. Things went well between the two, until it came time to harvest the fruits of their little enterprise. The lawyer was quite desirous of making wine from their bounty, whereas the preacher, a devout teetotaler and aspiring prohibitionist, objected so strongly that their partnership in the Forest had to be dissolved.

Today's Petrified Forest owes much of its appearance to the vision, hard work and unrelenting promotional efforts of one woman, Ollie Bockee (pronounced "bouquet"). She and her husband, David Bockee (whom she later divorced), purchased the Forest in 1914 from a local entrepreneur named M.C. "Boss" Meeker. Ollie had been looking for a farm or a mountain ranch with plenty of greenery. While the Forest certainly was quite green, the asking price was far too much "green" for Ollie's taste or pocketbook. At the time, comparable 200 acre properties in the area were costing between $1,500 and $2,000 apiece. Yet the owner was asking $16,000 for the place! Why such an outrageous price, Ollie wanted to know? It was explained that the Forest was no ordinary forest, it was a "petrified" forest. Ollie was then asked how much money she had, "$4,000", she replied. "Good," the seller said, "I'll take that as a down payment and you can owe me the rest."

At the time, The Forest hadn't really changed much since the time of Petrified Charlie. It consisted of "The Queen Tree", "The Stevenson Tree," and several petrified wood piles. Ollie realized that if more petrified trees were excavated and more of their lengths exposed, there would be more for visitors to see and more of them would come. To help pay for such ambitious excavations, Ollie hit upon a budgetary plan whereby half of the admissions window's receipts went to necessaries such as food, clothing and shelter. The other half was plowed back into the business, primarily to defray excavations costs. (Government taxes must have come from the sale of souvenirs!)

Thus Ollie instigated nearly twenty-five years of excavation work. She also directed her son, Harold, to build a family home with enough extra patio room to house a modest souvenir-curio shop to serve the ever-increasing number of visitors. Harold finished the family home in 1917. It was modeled after a Swiss chalet, with five upstairs bedrooms and a sitting room. An extension was added to the downstairs's den in order to house a gift shop with interesting artifacts and fossils displayed in the cases.

Besides digging out and exposing more petrified trees and having her son build their home, Ollie was always on the look-out for free publicity in the newspapers. One was to give to the City of New York a petrified log weighing some 5600 pounds. Her first headline grabber was the exhibition of one or more of her petrified logs to the 1915 Pan American Exposition, held in the Marina area on San Francisco. On a smaller scale, Ollie gave Christmas trees cut from her property to local children. Also each summer Ollie invited students from the University of California at Berkeley to make field trips to the Forest.

Ollie patiently followed her plan of excavating more of the trees to attract more visitors. But it didn't begin to bear fruit until the Thirties after the Carquenas and then Golden Gate bridges were completed and what is now Petrified Forest Road had been paved. In 1930 more the 20,000 people visited the Petrified Forest. To this day the the Forest has remained a mecca for motorist, a roadside attraction for curiosity seekers.

Ollie Orre Bockee passed away in August of 1950. Her son, Harold Bockee, was her sole heir, but he followed his mother in death one year later and without leaving a will. Ollie's surviving sister, Jeanette Orre Hawthorne, claimed the Petrified Forest as her own. With the help of her husband, Charles, Jeanette began to remodel the house, especially the gift shop area, which in 1952 was completely remodeled. Also a coffee shop was built so the ever-increasing numbers of visitors could be served. With Jeanette's death in January, 1969 the Petrified Forest was placed in trust, leaving Jeanette's grandchildren to eventually inherit the attractions.

Written by Chris Conway