Nez by the big log, Petrified Forest, AZ, 1935

About this postcard

A tall Native American man, identified in the printed caption as Nez, stands at the left end of a long, deeply fissured log of petrified wood on an arid, stone-strewn plain under a pale blue sky. He wears a red blanket and blue trousers, with a headband, and the caption notes that he is over six feet two, using him to gauge the size of the log. The surrounding ground is littered with smaller pieces of petrified wood. The Petrified Forest region of northern Arizona, then a national monument, preserves Late Triassic trees that were slowly replaced by silica and now lie exposed as red and ochre stone. Views like this one, with a posed figure for scale, were a staple of commercial postcards that brought tourists to the Southwest in the 1930s.