Yellowstone National Park is the oldest, largest and most popular National Park in the continental United States. Few places on earth offer so much scenic and scientific interest in one area. Yellowstone is in the heart of the Rockies, a land of pine-clad mountains and broad, grassy valleys. The countryside is laced with lakes and streams of exquisite beauty.
The popular West Entrance to Yellowstone parallels the winding Madison River, a route followed by the earliest pioneers into the park. It leads to the Grand Loop Road that will take you to all of the park’s major features.
Yellowstone National Park, established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is dominant.
The park is part of the most seismically active region of the Rocky Mountains, a volcanic 'hot spot'. The Yellowstone Plateau, now a forested area of 650,000 ha with an average elevation of 2,000 m, was formed out of the accumulation of rhyolite magma. The plateau is flanked on the north, east and south by mountains that rise to 4,000 m. Crustal uplifts 65 million years ago raised blocks of crust to form the southern Rocky Mountains. After that, volcanic outflows of andesitic composition were common to about 40 million years ago. Andesitic ashflows and mudflows of the Eocene age covered forests, which became petrified. Some 200 species of petrified plant have been found. A more recent period of rhyolitic volcanism began in the region about 2 million years ago, during which time thousands of cubic kilometres of rhyolitic magma filled immense chambers under the plateau and then erupted to the surface. Three cycles of eruption produced huge explosive outbursts of ash. The latest eruptive cycle formed a caldera 45 km wide and 75 km long, when the active magma chambers erupted and collapsed. The crystallizing magma is the source of heat for hydrothermal features such as geysers, hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles.
Yellowstone National Park is a protected area showcasing significant geological phenomena and processes. It is also a unique manifestation of geothermal forces, natural beauty, and wild ecosystems where rare and endangered species thrive. As the site of one of the few remaining intact large ecosystems in the northern temperate zone of earth, Yellowstone’s ecological communities provide unparalleled opportunities for conservation, study, and enjoyment of large-scale wildland ecosystem processes.
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