98 Fun Facts About Yellowstone

In which year did Yellowstone become the world's first national park?

An act of the 42nd Congress created it on March 1, 1872; it is widely understood to be the first national park anywhere.

Which U.S. President signed the act that established Yellowstone as a national park?

President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law on March 1, 1872, creating the world's first national park.

Approximately 96 percent of Yellowstone National Park's land area lies within which US state?

Wyoming has the 96 percent; smaller portions extend into Montana and Idaho.

What is the name of Yellowstone's most famous geyser, christened by the 1870 Washburn Expedition?

Old Faithful earned its name because the expedition noticed it went off on a dependable schedule; the Old Faithful Inn beside it, built in 1904, is a National Historic Landmark.

What kind of volcanic system underlies Yellowstone National Park?

Yellowstone sits on a supervolcano: an active volcanic system whose vast caldera was formed by explosive eruptions that ejected hundreds of cubic miles of ash and rock.

Which Yellowstone feature is the world's third-largest of its kind, behind Frying Pan Lake and Boiling Lake?

Grand Prismatic Spring, the park's largest hot spring at about 370 feet across, takes its name from the rainbow of colour bands that ring its deep-blue centre.

Yellowstone National Park is home to approximately what percentage of the world's geysers?

Yellowstone holds roughly 500 geysers, about 50 percent of all the geysers on Earth, clustered in basins such as the Upper Geyser Basin around Old Faithful.

Who was appointed as Yellowstone's first gamekeeper in 1880, often considered the first park ranger?

Harry Yount was appointed as a gamekeeper in 1880 to control poaching and vandalism, and is widely regarded as the first national park ranger.

Which animal, reintroduced to Yellowstone, is considered a keystone species that reshaped the park's ecosystem?

Wolves imported from Canada were released in 1995 after a 70-year absence. Their return changed elk grazing habits, and scientists credit that with the recovery of the park's aspen.

What is the highest point in Yellowstone National Park?

The highest point in Yellowstone National Park is Eagle Peak, which stands at 11,358 feet (3,462 meters) in the Absaroka Range.

Which Yellowstone feature is a broad terraced hillside of travertine next to Fort Yellowstone?

Mammoth Hot Springs is a hillside of travertine terraces, such as Minerva Terrace, built as hot water deposits calcium carbonate; thermophilic microbes tint the steps brown, orange and green.

Which entity managed Yellowstone National Park for about 30 years, between 1886 and 1916?

Due to insufficient manpower and resources for early superintendents, the U.S. Army was commissioned to manage Yellowstone for 30 years, constructing Fort Yellowstone at Mammoth Hot Springs.

Yellowstone National Park was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in what year?

UNESCO inscribed Yellowstone as a World Heritage Site in 1978, among the first twelve sites ever listed; it had been a Biosphere Reserve since 1976 and sat on the Danger list from 1995 to 2003.

What is the average elevation of the Yellowstone Plateau, upon which most of the park sits?

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of about 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) above sea level.

The 1988 fires burned roughly what share of Yellowstone National Park?

About 36 percent of the park, some 793,880 acres, burned in the 1988 fires, which followed the driest summer in Yellowstone's recorded history.

Which tree, the most common in Yellowstone, has cones that generally open only in the heat of a fire?

Lodgepole pine forests cover 80% of the park's forested area, and the 1988 fires triggered a mass release of seed; whitebark pine and Engelmann spruce prefer colder, wetter spots.

How long ago did the cataclysmic eruption that formed the Yellowstone Caldera occur?

That blast released more than 240 cubic miles of ash and rock. Some 80 smaller eruptions of rhyolite and basalt lava have since nearly filled the caldera back in.

What gives Yellowstone's largest hot spring its rainbow rings of red, orange, yellow and green?

Mats of thermophilic bacteria and archaea ring the pool, each colour marking a temperature band. Research on Yellowstone thermophiles has helped develop virus tests and biodegradable plastics.

Which of these mountain ranges forms the eastern boundary of Yellowstone National Park?

The Absaroka Range forms Yellowstone's eastern boundary along the Wyoming side; the Gallatin Range lies to the northwest and the Teton Range to the south.

At about 3,468 square miles, Yellowstone is larger than either of which two US states?

Delaware covers roughly 2,490 square miles and Rhode Island about 1,545. Only those two states are smaller than the park.

Which fish-eating raptor builds stick nests on the rock pinnacles of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone?

Ospreys, which eat almost nothing but fish, build bulky stick nests on the rock pinnacles of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and in treetops near the park's lakes and rivers.

Who was Yellowstone's first superintendent, serving without a salary or staff?

He served five years with no salary, funding or staff, and later became known as 'National Park' Langford. Local mining and logging interests had opposed the park.

How many waterfalls of at least 15 feet does Yellowstone contain?

Yellowstone has about 290 waterfalls at least 15 feet high; the Yellowstone River alone drops over the Upper and Lower Falls inside the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Which Yellowstone feature is the world’s tallest active geyser, throwing water 300 to 400 feet?

Steamboat Geyser, located in Norris Geyser Basin, can throw water to heights of 300 feet (90 meters) and higher, making it the world's highest-erupting geyser.

The vast forests and grasslands of Yellowstone represent which type of biome as the most abundant?

While Yellowstone represents many types of biomes, subalpine forest is the most abundant.

How many major volcanic eruptions have shaped the Yellowstone Plateau over the past 2.2 million years?

Three supereruptions, about 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago, built the plateau; the first was the largest, ejecting about 588 cubic miles of material.

Which of these is NOT one of Yellowstone's hydrothermal features, of which the park has at least 10,000?

Glacier cave is the odd one out; Yellowstone's 10,000-plus features are geysers, hot springs, mudpots and fumaroles, all driven by heat from below.

Which president signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act of 1894?

Grover Cleveland signed the 1894 act on May 7, weeks after poacher Ed Howell was caught butchering bison in Pelican Valley; it made killing park wildlife a federal offence.

Which tectonic plate has been drifting southwest over the stationary Yellowstone hotspot?

The North American Plate drifts southwest over the fixed plume, so a chain of extinct calderas runs back across Idaho's Snake River Plain toward Nevada and Oregon, older the farther from Yellowstone.

Which Yellowstone valley, along the river of the same name, is the best-known place to see grizzlies and wolves?

Lamar Valley is where wolves were released in 1995, at Soda Butte, Crystal Creek and Rose Creek, and it remains one of the most reliable places on Earth to watch them.

What is the approximate maximum depth of Yellowstone Lake?

Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 meters) deep, with an average depth of 140 feet.

How tall are the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River in the park's Grand Canyon?

The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River drop 308 feet (94 meters), nearly twice the height of Niagara, into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Yellowstone National Park experiences how many earthquakes annually, due to its active volcanic nature?

Yellowstone records 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes a year, almost all too small to feel; they are tracked by a seismic network run with the University of Utah.

Which 1871 expedition's report and pictures convinced Congress to create Yellowstone?

Its leader warned Congress that vandals were waiting to 'despoil, beyond recovery' the region's curiosities in a single season if it were not preserved at once.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is cut mainly into which volcanic rock?

The canyon is carved into rhyolite lava flows; hot water altered the rock's iron minerals, giving the walls their yellows, pinks and reds.

Which invasive fish, found in Yellowstone's largest lake in 1994, preys on native cutthroat?

Discovered in the lake in 1994, they eat the native cutthroat trout. The Park Service runs an eradication programme and anglers must kill every lake trout they catch.

Roughly how often does Old Faithful erupt?

Old Faithful erupts roughly every 90 minutes, with intervals ranging from about 60 to 110 minutes; the 1870 Washburn Expedition timed its regularity and named it for that.

The park contains one of the world's largest petrified forests, formed when trees were buried by what?

Volcanic ash and soil from Eocene eruptions buried the forests of Specimen Ridge about 50 million years ago, and silica-rich groundwater then turned the standing trunks to stone.

Which body of water gives its name to the 1959 magnitude 7.2 earthquake just outside Yellowstone?

The quake triggered a landslide that dammed the Madison River, creating a new lake known simply as Earthquake Lake.

Approximately what percentage of Yellowstone National Park is covered by forests?

Approximately 80% of Yellowstone National Park is covered by forests, with 15% grassland and 5% covered by water.

Which large mammal's Yellowstone herd is the oldest and largest public herd of its kind in the United States?

Bison have roamed Yellowstone continuously since prehistoric times, which is why its herd is the oldest public one in the US.

Which thermal area near Hayden Valley contains Dragon's Mouth Spring?

Dragon's Mouth Spring, whose cave roars and belches steam, lies in the Mud Volcano area beside the Yellowstone River south of Hayden Valley, among acidic mudpots such as Black Dragon's Caldron.

Roughly how large is the Yellowstone Caldera?

The Yellowstone Caldera spans roughly 45 by 28 miles (70 by 45 km), so large that Yellowstone Lake sits partly inside it and its rim is hard to pick out from the ground.

Annual precipitation in the driest part of Yellowstone, near its northern edge, is roughly how much?

The park's driest ground, near Mammoth on the northern edge, gets about 15 inches a year, while the southwestern corner receives up to 80 inches as Pacific moisture funnels up the Snake River Plain.

What structure greets visitors at Yellowstone’s north entrance in Gardiner, Montana?

The Roosevelt Arch marked the original main entrance, reached by a Northern Pacific spur; the west, south and northeast gates were built up for motorists between 1924 and 1935.

In which major ecoregion is Yellowstone National Park primarily located?

Yellowstone National Park is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

What is the lowest point in Yellowstone National Park?

The lowest point in Yellowstone National Park is along Reese Creek, at 5,282 feet (1,610 meters) above sea level.

Whose photographs from the 1871 government survey helped persuade Congress to make Yellowstone a national park?

His photographs travelled with Thomas Moran's paintings; Moran's huge canvas The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone showed the new park to Americans back east.

In which state is West Yellowstone, the gateway town at the park's west entrance?

West Yellowstone, Montana sits just outside the park's West Entrance, its busiest gate, and is one of the Montana gateway towns along with Gardiner and Cooke City.

Which gateway town east of Yellowstone was founded by and named for Buffalo Bill?

Cody, Wyoming, about 50 miles from the East Entrance, was founded in 1896 by William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody, who also built the town's Irma Hotel, named for his daughter.

What shape does Yellowstone's Grand Loop Road trace through the park?

The 142-mile Grand Loop Road forms a figure eight, the Norris–Canyon road joining its upper and lower loops, and passes most of the park's major sights.

Which naturalist accompanied Theodore Roosevelt on his 1903 Yellowstone trip?

John Burroughs rode through Yellowstone with Roosevelt in April 1903 and wrote up the two-week trip in Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt; Muir's turn came weeks later in Yosemite.

Which bird nests in colonies on the Molly Islands in Yellowstone Lake?

American white pelicans nest on the Molly Islands in Yellowstone Lake's Southeast Arm, one of the few breeding colonies of the species in the Rocky Mountains.

What distinction does Yellowstone Lake, at 7,732 feet, hold in North America?

Yellowstone Lake, over 130 square miles at 7,732 feet, is North America's largest freshwater body above 7,000 feet; it freezes over by December under ice nearly three feet thick.

What turns the bases of Yellowstone's 'bobby socks' trees white?

Silica from thermal water is the cause: lodgepole pines standing in hot-spring runoff soak up silica-laden water, and as it dries the mineral whitens their lower trunks, creating the 'bobby socks' trees of the Lower Geyser Basin.

The gray wolf returned to Yellowstone in 1995 after being wiped out there in which decade?

The Park Service kept its predator-control policy going until 1933, by which time elk numbers were exploding and aspen and cottonwood were being grazed to death.

The first wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone in January 1995 were captured in which country?

Fourteen wolves from packs near Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, arrived in January 1995 and were held in acclimation pens before release.

Which pass between Tower and Canyon is the highest point on Yellowstone's Grand Loop Road?

Dunraven Pass, roughly 8,900 feet up on the Tower–Canyon road, is the highest point on the Grand Loop Road; it is named for the Earl of Dunraven, who toured the park in 1874.

Yellowstone's bison herd, the oldest public herd in the US, descends from how many survivors of the 1800s slaughter?

Only about 23 wild bison survived, hiding in Pelican Valley, by 1902; the herd of several thousand that followed descends from them and from 21 animals bought from private herds that year.

Which tribe crossed Yellowstone in 1877 while fleeing the US Army, capturing several tourists?

The Nez Perce, led by Chief Joseph and other chiefs, crossed the park in August 1877 during their 1,170-mile flight toward Canada, seizing a tourist party near the Lower Geyser Basin.

Which large white bird, North America's heaviest native waterfowl, breeds in Yellowstone?

Trumpeter swans, weighing up to about 30 pounds, breed in Yellowstone; the nearby Red Rock Lakes refuge was created in 1935 to shelter some of the species' last few dozen birds.

Which highway, called 'the most beautiful drive in America' by Charles Kuralt, reaches Yellowstone's Northeast Entrance?

The Beartooth Highway, US 212, climbs to nearly 11,000 feet at Beartooth Pass between Red Lodge, Montana and the Northeast Entrance; Kuralt called it 'the most beautiful drive in America'.

Which painter on the 1871 Hayden Survey produced images that helped persuade Congress to create the park?

He was so transformed by the trip that he began signing his work T-Y-M, for Thomas 'Yellowstone' Moran.

What did Yellowstone shut down in 1970 to wean grizzly bears off human food?

Yellowstone closed its open garbage dumps in 1970 over the Craighead brothers' objections, forcing grizzlies back onto natural foods; bear deaths spiked before the population recovered.

The first American known to enter what is now Yellowstone, in 1807-08, was a veteran of which expedition?

John Colter, a veteran of the Lewis and Clark expedition, crossed the region in the winter of 1807–08; his tales of boiling springs and sulphur were mocked as 'Colter's Hell'.

The English name 'Yellowstone' is a translation of a river name from which Native American language?

French trappers rendered the Hidatsa name Mi tsi a-da-zi, 'rock yellow river', as Roche Jaune, which Lewis and Clark anglicised to Yellowstone.

Which animal is Yellowstone's most abundant large mammal?

Elk are Yellowstone's most abundant large mammal, far outnumbering bison; bulls' bugling echoes around Mammoth Hot Springs during the September rut.

What phrase from the 1872 act creating the park is inscribed on top of the Roosevelt Arch?

The arch's top reads 'For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People', words from the 1872 act; it cost about $10,000 and stands at the only one of the park's five entrances open to cars year-round.

The Old Faithful Inn, opened in 1904, holds what record?

The Old Faithful Inn, built over the winter of 1903–04 from local lodgepole pine and rhyolite, is considered the largest log hotel in the world; it opened with electric lights and steam heat.

Which Yellowstone geyser basin holds Grand Prismatic Spring?

Grand Prismatic Spring lies in the Midway Geyser Basin, between the Upper and Lower basins, where a boardwalk loops past it and Excelsior Geyser Crater.

Sheepeater Cliff, named for the Tukudika people, is made of columns of which rock?

Sheepeater Cliff is a wall of columnar basalt, hexagonal pillars formed as a slow-cooling lava flow contracted; it is named for the Tukudika, or Sheep Eater, Shoshone who lived year-round in the Yellowstone highlands.

Which federal agency leads the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory that monitors the park's volcano?

The U.S. Geological Survey leads the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, founded in 2001 with the National Park Service and the University of Utah to track quakes, ground uplift and gas emissions.

How did the 1959 magnitude 7.2 Hebgen Lake earthquake, just outside the park, create a new lake?

A landslide that dammed a river did it: the quake dropped some 80 million tons of rock into the Madison River canyon, impounding Earthquake Lake; 28 people died, many of them campers buried by the slide.

Isa Lake, straddling the Continental Divide at Craig Pass, drains to how many oceans?

Two: Isa Lake's east side drains to the Pacific via the Snake River and its west side to the Atlantic's Gulf of Mexico via the Madison and Missouri, the reverse of what you would expect.

Fishing Cone geyser on Yellowstone Lake is named for an 1870 story about a trout accidentally being what?

Walter Trumbull wrote that the fish 'darted about with wonderful rapidity' before rising to the top, dead.

Which river flows past Old Faithful?

The Firehole River flows north past Old Faithful through the Upper, Midway and Lower geyser basins, then joins the Gibbon at Madison Junction to form the Madison River.

Excelsior Geyser, mostly a boiling pool, discharges roughly how much water per minute?

Excelsior Geyser Crater pours about 4,000 gallons a minute of near-boiling water into the Firehole River; in the 1880s it was a true geyser with eruptions topping 300 feet.

Which geyser basin, Yellowstone's largest by area, holds Fountain Paint Pot and Great Fountain Geyser?

The Lower Geyser Basin, covering about 11 square miles along the Firehole, is the park's largest; its Fountain Paint Pot trail passes mudpots, fumaroles and Clepsydra Geyser.

Roughly how large is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that surrounds the park?

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem spans about 20 million acres across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, taking in two national parks, several national forests and wildlife refuges around Yellowstone's own 2.2 million acres.

Which rock, quarried at a Yellowstone cliff, reached Ohio's Hopewell mounds as ceremonial goods?

Obsidian from Obsidian Cliff, a National Historic Landmark quarry, has been found in Hopewell burial mounds in Ohio, carried some 1,500 miles east around 2,000 years ago.

Which national park lies 10 miles south of Yellowstone, linked by the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway?

Grand Teton owes its size to Rockefeller, who quietly bought up Jackson Hole land in the 1930s so it could be added, against fierce local opposition.

Which animal, North America's fastest land mammal, lives on Yellowstone's northern range?

Pronghorn, able to sprint at around 60 mph, live on the park's northern range between Gardiner and the Lamar Valley, where Yellowstone's small herd winters.

June 2022's record Yellowstone River flooding broke a mark that had stood since which year?

At Corwin Springs the Yellowstone River crested at 13.88 feet on June 13, 2022, far above the 11.5-foot record from 1918; roads and bridges failed and the park evacuated visitors.

Morning Glory Pool's blue centre has faded since the 1950s mainly because visitors did what?

Visitors threw coins and debris into it for decades, clogging Morning Glory Pool's vent, cooling the water and letting orange and yellow microbes creep in from the rim; rangers have repeatedly vacuumed it out.

Roughly how many grizzlies were estimated to live wholly or partly inside Yellowstone as of 2017?

About 150 grizzlies lived wholly or partly inside the park in 2017, out of roughly 700 across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem; federal delistings in 2007 and 2017 were both reversed in court.

Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone is thought to be the largest lake in the lower 48 states that cannot be reached how?

Shoshone Lake, about 8,000 acres, can be reached only by trail or by paddling up the Lewis River channel, making it the largest lower-48 lake with no road access; it was fishless until stocking began in 1890.

Which US Mint program put Yellowstone on a coin in 2010?

Yellowstone's quarter, showing Old Faithful erupting behind a bison, was the second coin in the America the Beautiful Quarters series, released in 2010 after Hot Springs National Park.

Which Belgian Jesuit was shown Yellowstone's geysers by a group of Piegan Blackfeet in the 1860s?

Francis Xavier Kuppens, a Belgian Jesuit missionary, was led to the geysers by Piegan Blackfeet and later described them to Montana's acting governor Thomas Meagher, who mused about preserving the area.

Which Upper Geyser Basin geyser is the world's tallest predictable geyser, reaching about 200 feet?

Grand Geyser, the world's tallest predictable geyser, erupts in a series of bursts to about 200 feet roughly every six to eight hours, unlike the more modest but more famous Old Faithful.

Built in 1891, which is the oldest of Yellowstone's hotels?

The Lake Hotel opened in 1891 on Yellowstone Lake's northern shore; Robert Reamer, architect of the Old Faithful Inn, added its Colonial Revival columns from 1903.

Mountain man Jim Bridger's tall tale about Yellowstone's petrified forest featured petrified what?

Bridger may have seen the real petrified trees near Tower Junction, but his stories were long dismissed as yarns.

In which year did Yellowstone's annual visitation first pass one million?

Yellowstone first topped one million visitors in 1948, as post-war car travel boomed, and passed two million in 1965.

Which geyser basin, sitting where three major faults meet, is the hottest in the park?

Norris Geyser Basin, the park's hottest and most changeable, sits where the Norris–Mammoth corridor, the Hebgen Lake fault zone and the caldera's ring fractures meet; trails closed in 2003 when ground temperatures spiked.

Tower Fall, named for the rock pinnacles at its lip, plunges how far?

John Colter passed nearby in the winter of 1807–08, the first American known to enter the future park.

Yellowstone's 'Zone of Death' legal loophole lies in which state's sliver of the park?

The 50-square-mile Idaho strip of the park has no residents, yet the Sixth Amendment requires jurors from both the state and the federal district of a crime, so law professor Brian Kalt argued no jury could be seated.

Castle Geyser's fortress-like cone is built from what mineral deposit?

Castle Geyser's 12-foot cone is geyserite, silica-rich sinter deposited over thousands of years by its own splashing water; Lt. Gustavus Doane named it in 1870 for its turrets.

Which of these is one of only two mountain ranges lying entirely inside Yellowstone?

The Washburn Range and the Red Mountains are the only ranges wholly inside the park; the Washburn's namesake peak was climbed on August 29, 1870 by Henry D. Washburn's expedition.

The 1987 Teton–Yellowstone tornado, the most powerful ever recorded in Wyoming, was rated what?

The F4 Teton–Yellowstone tornado touched down in the Teton Wilderness on July 21, 1987 at about 10,000 feet, flattening some 15,000 acres of forest before crossing into the park.