Painted Desert Indian Center

Painted Desert Indian Center in Holbrook, Arizona has been open on Route 66 since 1979. Pull off the road for the Jurassic photo ops, and wander inside to check out the unique selection of Arizona souvenirs.

Petrified wood shops are popular roadside stops in eastern Arizona. It makes sense as it’s a commodity that is prolific in the area, especially within the popular Petrified Forest National Park. What is petrified wood? Petrified wood is a type of fossilized wood that transforms over millions of years. Through a process called mineralization, organic matter in the wood gradually gets replaced by minerals, often silica or quartz, preserving the original structure and cellular details of the wood. It is illegal to take specimens out of the park, so it’s only natural that shops surround the area that sell petrified wood of all shapes and sizes to tourists who want to take home a souvenir. And many of those shops do anything they can to lure you from the road and make sure their shop stands out above the rest.

One of these shops is the Painted Desert Indian Center in Holbrook, Arizona who capture the attention of motorists with oversized teepees and dinosaur roadside attractions.

Painted Desert Indian Center is located off I-40 on the south side of the highway. Find it across the way from another Route 66 roadside attraction and rock shop: Stewart’s Petrified Wood.

Inside this souvenir shop you’ll find authentic Native jewelry, rugs, sandpaintings, crafts, Kachina dolls, local pottery, rocks, petrified wood, and fossils, alongside your typical Route 66 souvenirs.

Outside of the shop you’ll find a menagerie of roadside attractions meant to catch your eye from the highway. There are painted teepees, an “Old Indian Weather Rock,” and a bevy of large cartoonish dinosaurs attacking other dinosaurs.

The dinosaur roadside attractions came from the now shuttered International Dinosaur Park and Museum of the Americas, which closed in 2007.