Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The stuff can be found all over the place underneath Sweet Home, and petrified wood took center stage at the Sweet Home Rock and Mineral Society’s 60th Annual Rock and Gem Show Saturday and Sunday.
Around 2,500 visitors passed by petrified logs as they entered the high school activity gym, and a number of exhibits featured branches and cross sections of petrified trees, one of the largest a piece from Sweet Home presented by Pat McCollum along with pieces from all over the west displayed by Larry McDonald of Terrebonne.
“We had 1,429 here yesterday,” society member Mona Waibel said Sunday. Sunday’s count was at about 900 with an hour left before the show closed.
Organizers expected that total to reach 1,000 before the end of the day, society board member Dean Crittenden of Lebanon said.
“I thought that the snow would keep them away, but it was reversed,” Waibel said. It wasn’t the best turnout ever, but it’s one of the best in the last several years. In the 1960s, the show drew 5,000 visitors.
“When we opened up yesterday, we had at least 70 people there,” Crittenden said. “The dealers were all smiling, and the sales have been very good.”
“Yesterday was very busy,” said Cindy Allison of Earth’s Treasures of Eugene. “It’s a very good show. A lot of it is the attitude. There’s always a very good attitude. The club is very supportive, which makes it easier for dealers to do what we do.”
She was busy selling a variety of items made from rocks, including birds carved from stones, which intrigued Brady Severns, who had just returned from a vacation in Colorado. He said an 8-year-old cousin was told that rock birds come from rock eggs and if he sat on a rock egg, it might hatch. His cousin tried it to his amusement. Severns said he wanted a photo of the rock birds to send to his cousin.
Eight-year-old Jordan Landel of Seattle is used to visiting rock shows, and he was busy enjoying this one.
“I did the spinning thing over there, and I got this duck,” he said as his mother held out the prize her son had won at the prize wheel. And over at the kids craft table, “I made this geode.” The geodes were made using beads inside an open half-sphere.
“I collect rocks,” Jordan said. He said he enjoys them because “some of them are like really shiny and stuff, and some are really weird shapes.”
Among the hundreds exploring the geological wonders spread across tables was Frank Pickell of Salem. He’s never particularly been interested in rocks, he said, but “my buddy’s into it.”
It was his first visit to a rock show, and it was “cool, very cool,” he said as he examined McCollum’s petrified wood specimen. He has never been into rockhounding, but his buddy “does it all the time. I couldn’t figure out what he sees in it. Now I do.”
He was impressed that the stone had once been wood, he said.
As part of its 60th anniversary celebration, the show’s theme focused on Sweet Home’s petrified forest.
“We tried to feature petrified wood as much as we could,” Crittenden said. “Sweet Home sits on top of a petrified forest. The big stuff is 4 to 6 feet down.”
Brad Newport had several pieces of petrified wood on display from his property in the Holley area, his first time participating in the Sweet Home rock show although not the first time he has attended a rock show.
“I guess the first rock show I ever went to, I was 6,” Newport said. That was at Fairview School just after he and his family had moved from Seattle, Wash. He found a “peanut” agate and convinced his parents to buy it for him.
Petrified wood can be found on his property anywhere from 2 feet to 12 feet down, he said, and it draws interest from around the world. He is anticipating a visit from a family from the East
Coast, who are planning to dig petrified wood this summer.
Petrified wood forms when wood is buried quickly in some kind of catastrophic event, said McDonald, who was president of the Sweet Home club for the last two years. The wood must be buried quickly, by a volcanic mud flow, for example.
“Over time, mineral-bearing water seeps into it and the petrification begins,” McDonald said. Over time, mineral crystals, typically agate, jasper and opal, replace the organic material. The type of mineral in the water determines the colors in the petrified logs.
“Scientifically, there’s a lot of discussion about how long petrification takes,” McDonald said. Some scientists believe it takes millions of years while others think it is a matter of hundreds of years; but the answer remains unknown. Some wood near Mt. St. Helen, which erupted in 1980, is showing signs of petrification already.
Scientists can look at the cell structure often preserved in petrified wood as the mineral crystals replace them to identify what type of tree has been preserved, he said.
Among his finds, McDonald once cut open a piece of petrified wood and found a petrified grub, he said. In Sweet Home, “a lot of this wood here, you’ll see worm rings around the outside. When you cut across the grain, you can see where there were worms in it.”