Fossil hunting in Arizona: where to find fossils, petrified wood and meteorites

Where can you go fossil hunting in Arizona? On BLM land and in the national forests, where you can legally collect common fossils: brachiopods and crinoids around Payson, sea fossils in the Kaibab limestone of the Mogollon Rim, petrified wood near Holbrook, and meteorites in the strewn fields of Mohave County, among the most hunted in the world. Petrified Forest National Park and the Grand Canyon hold the state's most famous fossils, but collecting there is illegal. Below: where to go, the meteorite fields on our map, how to search, the famous sites you can only visit, what you can keep, and the clubs that can take you there.

Where you can dig and take it home

Arizona has dozens of fossil sites, but most are in national parks, national monuments or on tribal and private land, where you can only look. These are the places we've checked one by one where you can legally collect and keep what you find:

1 fossil spot on public land with no active mining claim.
127 meteorite spots on BLM land inside known meteorite areas, with no active mining claim.
21 meteorite spots on BLM land inside known meteorite areas, with a possible mining claim: check the claim and ask the holder before you dig.
1 dig site set up for visitors, where you dig and keep what you find.
10 clubs that run fossil and meteorite trips, the easiest way into places you can't reach alone.
11 rock shops selling fossils, petrified wood or meteorites and 6 prospecting stores for detectors and digging tools, listed below.

Bones and teeth (vertebrate fossils) are protected on federal land: there, leave them in place and report them. Elsewhere the rules depend on the landowner: each site page says what applies.

See them on the Arizona map: 1 fossil spot · 148 meteorite spots · 1 dig site · 10 clubs · 17 shops

What people find in Arizona

Fossils: Petrified wood (1 spot), Brachiopods (1 spot), Bryozoans (1 spot), Crinoids (1 spot), Snails (1 spot), Clams (1 spot)

Meteorites: Stony meteorites (chondrites) (109 spots), Small irons (49 spots), Stony meteorites (L4 chondrite) (39 spots)

Where to find fossils in Arizona

The Indian Gardens Paleo Site, east of Payson on SR 260: a signed roadside site in the Tonto National Forest where brachiopods, bryozoans and crinoid stems from the Naco Formation, about 310 million years old, weather out of the slope every year. The easiest fossil stop in the state, and it's on our map.
Petrified wood outside the park: on BLM land you may collect up to 25 pounds a day plus one piece, up to 250 pounds a year. Around Holbrook, private ranches like DoBell let you dig rainbow wood legally.
On top of the Mogollon Rim and around Flagstaff: the Kaibab limestone, the same rock as the rim of the Grand Canyon, with brachiopods, sponges and sea urchin spines, much of it in national forest land.
Central Arizona: the Martin limestone, with Devonian corals and brachiopods. You may also see plates of ancient armored fish: those are vertebrates, so leave them in place.
Northeastern Arizona: the Chinle Formation, with petrified wood and Triassic reptiles, mostly inside Petrified Forest National Park or on Navajo and Hopi land.

Meteorite hunting in Arizona: Gold Basin, Franconia and Red Dry Lake

In 1995 Jim Kriegh, a retired University of Arizona professor, was detecting for gold in the washes of the White Hills, in Mohave County, when he realized that some of his 'hot rocks' were meteorites. They were pieces of a stony meteorite that fell about 15,000 years ago, and thousands of stones have been found since over an area of about 87 square miles. Gold Basin is one of the best-mapped strewn fields anywhere, and after thirty years of hunting, finds there are now rare.

North of Lake Havasu City, the Franconia area has given up hundreds of meteorites since 2002, in an area about 3 by 10 miles. They come from several different falls: mostly stony chondrites, plus small irons. Scientists count it among the most productive meteorite hunting grounds on Earth.

Near Dolan Springs, around the dry bed of Red Dry Lake, about twenty small meteorites were found and officially registered between 2001 and 2010. Flat, bare desert is classic meteorite country: a dark stone stands out against the pale ground.

How we map Arizona's meteorite fields

Our meteorite zones are built from official data. For each field we take the meteorites registered with the Meteoritical Society, draw a circle of about a mile around each find, keep only the open BLM land inside it, and place a marker about every 0.6 mile. Wilderness areas, national recreation areas, private land and state land are left out, and single finds far from any field are not mapped.

A meteorite zone shows where meteorites have been found, not where one is waiting for you. The odds of a find on any given day are low, but patient hunters still turn up the odd stone, and every new find adds to the science.

How to hunt fossils and meteorites in Arizona

Fossils: hand tools only. Search slopes and the loose rubble below outcrops, best after a good rain, when fresh pieces wash out. A hand lens helps with bryozoans and small shells.
Meteorites: walk slowly with a metal detector, or scan bare ground by eye for dark, heavy stones with a thin black or rusty crust. Most meteorites stick to a magnet: some hunters glue one to the end of a walking stick.
The desert hunting season runs from October to April. In summer, the Rim Country around Payson sits above 5,000 feet and stays far cooler than the desert.
Record the exact GPS point of anything you think is a meteorite. Without it, a find can't be properly registered.

Easy places to start in Arizona

The national park is look-only, but private land is a different story. Here you can dig real Arizona petrified wood and take it home:

DoBell Ranch (DoBell Mineral & Excavations) · Fee dig · Holbrook · Season: Year-round.

Join a fossil club in Arizona

In a state where most good fossil ground is protected or private, clubs are the easiest way in: they know the places, the claims and the landowners. The Southwest Paleontological Society in Mesa works side by side with the Arizona Museum of Natural History, and many rock and mineral clubs also run trips for fossils, petrified wood or meteorites. Write or call them and ask about their next trip.

Apache Junction Rock and Gem Club · Club field trips · Apache Junction
Daisy Mountain Rock and Mineral Club · Club field trips · Anthem
Mineralogical Society of Arizona · Club field trips · Scottsdale
Mingus Gem and Mineral Club · Club field trips · Cottonwood
Mohave County Gemstoners · Club field trips · Kingman
Payson Rimstones Rock Club · Club field trips · Payson
Pinal Gem and Mineral Society · Club field trips · Coolidge
Sedona Gem and Mineral Club · Club field trips · Sedona
Southwest Paleontological Society · Club field trips · Mesa
Wickenburg Gem and Mineral Society · Club with its own claims · Wickenburg

Fossil and rock shops in Arizona

Fossil and meteorite hunting in Arizona has tight limits: the famous places are national parks, and bones and teeth are protected on federal land. A rock shop is the easy, legal way to take a piece home. Several of the shops below sell meteorites, and one Tucson shop is co-owned by a geologist whose background includes Meteor Crater and the TV series Meteorite Men. In Holbrook, Jim Gray's has sold petrified wood for over 50 years and is known for a fossil alligator called Wild Bill. Detector and prospecting stores follow the rock shops:

Rock shops

Copper Canyon Lapidary & Jewelry · Online or by order, based in Sedona · Rough & slabs, Lapidary equipment, Fossils
Flagstaff Rock Shop · Storefront in Flagstaff · Mineral specimens, Fossils
Havasu Rocks · Storefront in Lake Havasu City · Mineral specimens, Rough & slabs, Fossils, Classes & training
Jim Gray's Petrified Wood Co. · Storefront in Holbrook · Mineral specimens, Rough & slabs, Fossils, Meteorites, Petrified wood
Mammoth Mine Rock Shop · Storefront in Apache Junction · Mineral specimens, Fossils, Petrified wood
Miners Rock Shop · Storefront in Tempe · Mineral specimens, Rough & slabs, Lapidary equipment, Fossils, Classes & training
Raining Rocks · Storefront in Tucson · Mineral specimens, Rough & slabs, Fossils, Meteorites, Petrified wood
Rare Earth Gallery · Storefront in Cave Creek · Mineral specimens, Fossils, Meteorites, Petrified wood
T-Rocks in Quartzsite · Storefront in Quartzsite · Mineral specimens, Rough & slabs, Fossils, Meteorites, Petrified wood
The Rock Yard (Tucson) · Storefront in Tucson · Mineral specimens, Rough & slabs, Petrified wood
Tucson Mineral & Gem World · Storefront in Tucson · Mineral specimens, Fossils, Meteorites, Petrified wood

Prospecting and detector stores

A & B Prospecting Supplies (Mesa) · Storefront in Mesa · Metal detectors, Gold pans & classifiers, Sluice boxes, Highbankers & power sluices, Dredges & parts, Drywashers, Picks, shovels & hand tools, Fine gold recovery, Assay & refining supplies
A & B Prospecting Supplies (Prescott Valley) · Storefront in Prescott Valley · Metal detectors, Gold pans & classifiers, Sluice boxes, Highbankers & power sluices, Dredges & parts, Drywashers, Picks, shovels & hand tools, Fine gold recovery, Assay & refining supplies
Bear's Archery, Guns and Prospecting · Storefront in Lake Havasu City · Metal detectors, Gold pans & classifiers
Miners Depot · Storefront in Quartzsite · Metal detectors, Gold pans & classifiers, Sluice boxes, Highbankers & power sluices, Dredges & parts, Drywashers, Picks, shovels & hand tools, Fine gold recovery, Paydirt
Nugget Shooter Metal Detector Sales · Online or by order, based in Morristown · Metal detectors, Classes & training
Rob's Detector Sales · Online or by order, based in Surprise · Metal detectors, Gold pans & classifiers, Picks, shovels & hand tools, Assay & refining supplies

Shopping for one thing? See every US shop that sells metal detectors, picks, shovels & hand tools, fossils, meteorites or petrified wood.

Famous fossil sites in Arizona you can visit but not dig

Petrified Forest National Park, east of Holbrook, holds one of the largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood in the world: conifers from the Late Triassic, about 225 million years ago, turned to stone and stained red and purple by minerals. Walk the Giant Logs and Crystal Forest trails, drive the Blue Mesa road, and see the fossils at the Rainbow Forest Museum. But taking anything is against the law, even a chip. Rangers do check: in 2016 a visitor caught with 35 pounds of petrified wood in his car was fined $1,000 and banned from federal lands in Arizona. The wood sold in the shops around the park comes from private land outside it. Want a piece of your own? Just outside the park, the DoBell Ranch lets you dig rainbow wood on family land and keep what you find.

The layered walls of the Grand Canyon are a textbook of ancient seas: brachiopods, crinoids, sponges and corals, plus the footprints of scorpions, centipedes and reptiles in the older sandstones. You can spot fossils right along the trails, but it is illegal to dig up, move or remove them anywhere in the park. The good news: the Kaibab limestone that caps the canyon rim also covers much of the Mogollon Rim country to the south, in national forests where casual collecting of common invertebrate fossils is allowed.

Meteor Crater, between Flagstaff and Winslow, is about three quarters of a mile wide, blasted out some 50,000 years ago by a nickel-iron meteorite around 160 feet across. Pieces of that meteorite are officially called Canyon Diablo. The crater has been owned by the Barringer family since the early 1900s and is run as a visitor attraction: you can walk the rim and see the museum, but there's no hunting. For that, head to the strewn fields on BLM land in Mohave County.

Along US-160 west of Tuba City, on the Navajo Nation, slabs of Moenave sandstone hold dozens of dinosaur footprints from the Early Jurassic, about 200 million years ago, most likely left by meat-eaters such as Dilophosaurus. Navajo guides meet visitors at the site and point out the best tracks for a tip. It's a look-only site: this is tribal land, and nothing may be taken.

Before you go out, see the real thing. The Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa has the largest dinosaur collection in the state, a Dinosaur Hall and a dig pit for kids. The Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, founded in 1928, cares for about 150,000 fossil specimens from the region. And the meteorite gallery at Arizona State University in Tempe, opened in 1961, shows thousands of meteorites side by side: the best way to learn what a real one looks like before you start hunting.

The day it rained stones on Holbrook

On the evening of July 19, 1912, a fireball crossed northern Arizona and broke up with a series of loud booms. More than 14,000 stones, most of them tiny, rained down around the Aztec railway station, about six miles east of Holbrook. People rushed out to pick them up, and small pieces still turn up today. The land there is private and state land, so the Holbrook strewn field is not on our map: if you want to hunt it, you need the landowner's permission.

Staying safe while fossil and meteorite hunting in Arizona

Carry plenty of water, more than you think you need. Desert heat kills every year.
Wear snake gaiters in the desert, and don't go alone: two vehicles are better than one on remote dirt roads.
Watch the weather: flash floods can turn a dry wash into a river in minutes.
Gold Basin and Franconia are old mining country. Shafts, tunnels and bad air can kill: never go inside an old mine.
Mark your car on the GPS before you start walking: after an hour, the desert all looks the same.

Arizona's state fossil and other curiosities

Arizona's state fossil is petrified wood, chosen in 1988.
Gold Basin was discovered by a gold prospector: a metal detector that rings on nuggets also rings on the iron inside most meteorites.
The Petrified Forest receives packages of stolen wood mailed back by visitors who believe it brought them bad luck. The Rainbow Forest Museum displays some of the letters.
Meteor Crater takes its name from the nearest post office, called Meteor.
University geology classes have been collecting at the Indian Gardens Paleo Site for decades, and they still find new species there.

Questions we often get

Is it legal to collect fossils in Arizona?

On BLM land and in the national forests, yes: common invertebrate and plant fossils, like shells, crinoids and leaf imprints, in reasonable amounts and for your own collection, without a permit. Selling or trading them is not allowed. National parks, national monuments and state parks are off limits, State Trust Land is not open to collecting, and on private or tribal land you need the owner's permission.

What is Arizona's state fossil?

Petrified wood, chosen in 1988. You can see the most famous logs at Petrified Forest National Park, where collecting is illegal, and collect your own on BLM land within the federal limits or at private digs like the DoBell Ranch near Holbrook.

Can I collect petrified wood in Arizona?

Yes, outside the national park. On BLM land you can take up to 25 pounds a day plus one piece, up to 250 pounds a year, for personal use. On private land, like the DoBell Ranch near Holbrook, you can dig with the owner's blessing and keep what you find.

Can I take petrified wood from Petrified Forest National Park?

No. Removing petrified wood or anything else from the park is illegal, even a small chip, and visitors have been fined. The wood sold in nearby shops comes from private land outside the park.

Can I keep a meteorite I find in Arizona?

On BLM land, yes: you can collect meteorites on the surface, with a metal detector but no motorized or mechanical tools, up to 10 pounds per person per year, for personal use only, with no selling or trading. In national parks they belong to the government, and on private land they belong to the landowner.

Can I look for meteorites at Meteor Crater?

No. Meteor Crater is private property, run as a visitor attraction. You can visit it, but hunting is not allowed. The public strewn fields are in Mohave County, on BLM land.

Can I collect fossils on Arizona State Trust Land?

No. State Trust Land is not public land, and the state recreation permit does not allow collecting. On land owned or controlled by the state, the Arizona Antiquities Act also forbids digging vertebrate fossil sites or collecting vertebrate fossils without a permit from the Arizona State Museum.

What if I find bones, teeth or dinosaur tracks?

Leave them where they are. Vertebrate fossils, including bones, teeth and tracks, can't be collected on federal land without a research permit, and the same goes for state land. Take a photo, note the location, and report it to the land manager or a museum.

Do I need a permit to collect fossils in Arizona's national forests?

Not for casual collecting: a limited amount of common invertebrate or plant fossils for personal use is allowed on most national forest land, including the Tonto. Wilderness areas and some sensitive areas are closed, and any commercial use needs authorization.