Painted Desert Inn not currently available at the inn. Hopi artist Fred Kabotie was engaged by Colter to paint the Inn's murals in 1947–48. Colter knew Kabotie from a previous collaboration at the Fred Harvey Hopi House in Grand Canyon National Park. Kabotie's work depicts aspects of Hopi life, including a journey through the Painted Desert to collect salt. Painted Desert Inn Painted Desert Inn is a lodge complex in Petrified Forest National Park, in Navajo County, eastern Arizona. It is located off of Interstate 40 and historic U.S. Route 66, overlooking the Painted Desert. The inn's lodge building and adobe guest cabins−"casitas"
Painted Desert (Arizona) desert is composed of stratified layers of easily erodible siltstone, mudstone, and shale of the Triassic Chinle Formation. These fine grained rock layers contain abundant iron and manganese compounds which provide the pigments for the various colors of the region. Thin resistant lacustrine limestone layers and volcanic flows cap the mesas. Numerous layers of silicic volcanic ash occur in the Chinle and provide the silica for the petrified logs of the area. The erosion of these layers has resulted in the formation of the badlands topography of the region. In the southern portions of the desert the remains of a