*** Source: Thompson, Robert A., Historical and descriptive sketch of Sonoma County, California. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877, 122 pgs. Notice: This data is donated to the Public Domain by TAG, 2004, and may be copied freely by anyone to anywhere. *** ---page 39--- THE PETRIFIED FOREST. The petrified forest deserves liberal space in any description of the places of interest in the county of Sonoma. It is a fossil forest of great extent, and not the least of its curious features is its owner, Charles Evans, or Petrified Charley, as he is now called. Charley is a Swede, who was born, well, no matter when, at all events, a long time after St. Helena buried the living forest of which we now have a cast in stone, in scoria from its heart of fire. The only possible connection between Charlie and the volcanic period is that the latter saw the trees buried, and the former exhumed them, and forms the missing link between the past and the present period. The forest is sixteen miles from Santa Rosa. It was not brought prominently into notice until 1871, when the land was enclosed by the present owner. Professor Whiting visited it, and Sam Brannan had a large rockery at the Calistoga springs from fragments hauled from the forest. A number of persons came out to see the trees, and this induced Evans to clear away the brush and excavate the most accessible of the trees, doing a little more every year; he then enclosed the land, and charges a small fee, as guide, to repay him for his labor. The trees lie in two tiers, forming a parallelogram, a mile in extent, from east to west, and about a quarter of a mile across, from north to south,-- the roots are towards the north and tops to the south. They lie at an angle of from five to thirty-five degrees; the butt end of the trees are always lowest. They are buried in volcanic ashes or tufa, and the ground around them fairly sparkles with particles of silica. The largest tree excavated is eleven feet in diameter at the root, and is sixty-eight feet long. It is broken in several places. The forest has been visited by about ten thousand persons in the past six years, and all who have been there express themselves as well repaid for their time and trouble. The forest can be reached and examined thoroughly in a day from Santa Rosa by J. P. Clark's Calistoga stage-line. Those visiting the Geysers by the Cloverdale route will be taken to the forest by Foss' line of stages from the Geysers to Calistoga. For the first six years the owner put in all his time in improving grounds, and it is admitted to be, in the language of Mr. Evans, "the prettiest place in the hills of California." PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The first State superintendent of public schools, John G. Marvin, reported to the legislature of 1852 the statistics he had been able to gather in the year 1851. Following is his report of Sonoma county in full: Number of children, 250. There are five schools in this county: one at Sonoma, one at Santa Rosa, one at Analy, one at Bodega, and another at San Miguel Ranch (Mark West). The three former are English, the latter is Spanish. They are supported by contributions and tuition money. In 1854 Dr. B. B. Bonham, first county superintendent of schools, reports 1,253 children between the ages of 4 and 18; 23 schools; 31 teachers, and 8 school districts. In 1859 the total number of children is reported at 5,138; number of teachers, 70; number of schools, 43. There are now in the county 138 schools and a school-population of 7,383. Of this population, 3,689 are boys, and 3,611 *** end ***