The World Famous Gopher Hole Museum

Thieves of ‘cursed’ rocks pen letters of remorse to a national park

The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is so named for its unique and plentiful petrified wood, formed from conifer trees that lived there some 225 million years ago. As more than 500,000 people visit the park each year, inevitably, not all heed the US National Park Service’s guidance to ‘take only photographs, leave only footprints’. And, as the acclaimed short documentary The Conscience Files explores, a small but not insignificant number of visitors come to deeply regret their decision, taking it upon themselves to return the stolen rocks via........

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