50 Fun Facts About Yellowstone National Park

Which US president signed the 1872 act creating Yellowstone, the world's first national park?

The act set the land apart 'as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people', words later carved into the Roosevelt Arch.

Yellowstone lies mostly in which US state?

Small slices of the park spill over into Montana and Idaho, and its only year-round road entrance is at Gardiner, Montana.

Roughly what share of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are found inside Yellowstone?

They are powered by the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent, which has erupted with tremendous force twice in the last two million years.

Old Faithful got its name from an 1870 expedition that noticed the geyser did what?

Nathaniel Langford's party watched it spout nine times during their stay; today it goes off on average every 92 minutes.

Which feature in Yellowstone's Norris Basin is the world's tallest active geyser?

Its major eruptions can throw water more than 300 feet into the air, but the wait between them has ranged from three days to fifty years.

What gives Grand Prismatic Spring its bands of red, orange, yellow and green?

The bands shift with the seasons: orange and red in summer, dark green in winter, depending on the ratio of chlorophyll to carotenoids.

Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the United States and ranks where in the world?

Only Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica are bigger.

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

It freezes over by early December under ice nearly three feet thick and can stay frozen until late May or early June.

The tallest waterfall in the park, the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, drops how far?

The park counts 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet, and it also has one of the world's largest petrified forests.

Gray wolves returned to Yellowstone in 1995 after being wiped out from the park 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 animals from packs near Jasper National Park in Alberta arrived in two shipments and were released into acclimation pens in the Lamar Valley.

Which Yellowstone valley, nicknamed 'America's Serengeti', was the release site for the 1995 wolves?

It remains one of the most reliable places in the world to see wild wolves, home to the Lamar Canyon and Junction Butte packs.

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

They hid out in the park's Pelican Valley; the herd numbered roughly 4,800 by 2020.

The great Yellowstone fires of 1988 burned roughly what portion of the park?

On September 8 the entire park closed to non-emergency personnel for the first time ever; the flames were only finally tamed by snow and rain three days later.

Which branch of government ran Yellowstone for three decades from 1886?

Troops built Camp Sheridan, later Fort Yellowstone, at Mammoth Hot Springs, and many of their patrol and anti-poaching practices were adopted by the Park Service.

Harry Yount, appointed gamekeeper in 1880 to fight poaching, is remembered as the first what?

A peak at the head of the Yellowstone River is named for him.

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.

Who took the large-format photographs of Yellowstone on the 1871 Hayden expedition?

Ferdinand Hayden warned lawmakers that without protection, 'vandals' would despoil the wonders 'in a single season'.

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

John Colter described a sulphurous geothermal area as 'hell', and Washington Irving's nickname 'Colter's Hell' stuck.

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

Other tribes had their own names: 'land of steam' in Crow and 'boiling earth' in Nez Perce.

Which president laid the cornerstone of the stone arch at the park's north entrance in 1903?

He happened to be visiting during construction and was asked to do the honours, which is how the arch took his name.

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

The arch cost about $10,000 and stands at the only one of the park's five entrances open year-round.

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

It was built over a single winter from local lodgepole pine and rhyolite, and opened with electric lights and steam heat.

Mammoth Hot Springs' terraces are built from travertine, which forms as hot water deposits what mineral?

More than two tons of it flow into Mammoth in solution every day, dissolved from limestone along the fault that feeds the springs.

The latest Yellowstone supereruption, which formed the present caldera, was roughly how long ago?

It produced the Lava Creek Tuff; the largest of the three cycles, 2.08 million years ago, formed the Island Park Caldera.

What geological feature beneath the park left a trail of calderas across the Snake River Plain?

The North American plate has drifted southwest over it, so the oldest calderas in the chain lie in Nevada and Oregon.

Which body monitors volcanic activity beneath the park and does not consider an eruption imminent?

The plateau has risen as fast as 150 millimetres a year, which geologists track as an indirect gauge of magma pressure.

The magnitude 7.2 Hebgen Lake earthquake of 1959, just outside the park, created a new lake how?

Quake Lake still sits behind the slide; the earthquake killed more than 28 people and remains Montana's deadliest.

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

Oddly, its east side flows to the Pacific and its west side to the Gulf of Mexico, the reverse of what you would expect.

Yellowstone Lake's Fishing Cone geyser 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 waterway, named by trappers for its steam, flows past Old Faithful?

It passes through three of the park's major geyser basins and over three waterfalls, including Kepler Cascades.

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

In the late 1800s it was a true geyser whose eruptions sometimes topped 300 feet and hurled 100-pound rocks.

Which tree species covers about 80% of Yellowstone's forested area?

The whitebark pine, by contrast, was listed as threatened in 2023 because of a fungus called white pine blister rust.

Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?

It was even placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 because of tourism pressure and invasive species.

What is the highest point in the park?

It rises 11,358 feet, while the lowest point, along Reese Creek, is barely 5,282 feet.

Which invasive fish threatens the native cutthroat in Yellowstone's largest body of water?

It was probably introduced illegally, though the government itself had stocked it in Shoshone and Lewis lakes on the Snake River side.

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is called the largest nearly intact ecosystem in which part of Earth?

The wider ecosystem covers about 20 million acres and includes Grand Teton National Park and several national forests.

Which volcanic glass, quarried at a cliff in the park, was carried by prehistoric people to Ohio?

Hopewell grave goods also include copper shaped like bighorn sheep horns, hinting that they may have visited Yellowstone themselves.

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

Rockefeller quietly bought up land in Jackson Hole in the 1930s so it could be added to the park, against fierce local opposition.

Yellowstone came under the National Park Service in 1917. What year was that agency created?

The army formally handed over control on October 31, 1918.

Record June 2022 flooding on the Yellowstone River broke a high-water mark that had stood since which year?

The river hit 13.88 feet, entrances were closed and visitors evacuated after roads and bridges failed.

Morning Glory Pool in the Upper Geyser Basin was named in 1883 after what?

The superintendent's wife first called it 'Convolutus', the flower's Latin name; the pool's colours come from bacteria in the water.

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

Roughly 700 lived across the wider Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and the bear was delisted in 2007 amid controversy.

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

Before 1890 it had no fish at all, because Lewis Falls blocked anything swimming upstream.

Yellowstone was honoured with its own coin in 2010 under which US Mint program?

The park had already been designated an International Biosphere Reserve back in 1976.

Which Eastern Shoshone band were Yellowstone's only year-round residents, hunting bighorn on foot?

Known as the Sheepeaters, they ceded their lands under an 1868 treaty that the United States never ratified.

Which railroad opened a gateway station at Livingston, Montana in 1883, sending visits soaring?

A spur ran to Cinnabar for a stagecoach connection to Mammoth, and was extended to Gardiner in 1902.

Which NPS director opened Yellowstone to automobiles on a trial basis in August 1915?

Cars boosted visitation so much that he ended horse-and-buggy access in 1917, giving tour operators little time to buy cars.

What is the most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau, at 10,243 feet?

It shares its name with Henry Washburn, Montana's surveyor-general, who led the 1870 expedition that named Old Faithful.

Which 1963 advisory paper, commissioned by Interior Secretary Udall, shaped Yellowstone's elk policy?

It followed public controversy over forced elk reductions and noted that culling programs in other parks had been ineffective.