Fun Facts About Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park Information

Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. in 1872 because of its amazing hot springs and geysers, which look like they’re from another world. It’s rare to see grizzly bears and wolves living alongside bison and moose in the same place. Yellowstone isn’t just a wild place; it really is wild. Beneath the ground, there’s a big volcano, and sometimes bison even cause traffic jams. Occasionally, water shoots up really high into the air from the geysers.

Even though Yellowstone has been open for 150 years, there are still some surprising things to learn. For example, the park’s hot springs are extremely hot and acidic. Also, in the past, there were shows featuring bears that visitors could watch, which is something you might not expect.

Facts About Yellowstone National Park

• Yellowstone National Park is really huge, stretching across three states: Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It’s mostly in Wyoming, but it also goes into parts of Idaho and Montana. The park is even bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware put together.

• Yellowstone National Park became a national park almost 20 years before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana became official states of the United States. Specifically, it became a national park 18 years before Wyoming or Idaho became states, and 17 years before Montana became a state.

• Yellowstone got its name from Native Americans who called it after the yellow sandstone along the Yellowstone River. Many people think it’s named for the bright yellow colors in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. But actually, it’s named after the sandstone along the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana, which is quite far from the park itself.

• In the early days of the park, people would come to see bears eating trash. These “bear shows” happened every night from around 1890 until World War II. Visitors would watch black and grizzly bears eating the garbage from the park, and they even built special seats for people to sit and watch.

• Yellowstone National Park has the most mammals living there compared to anywhere else in the lower 48 states. Around 67 different kinds of mammals, along with 300 types of birds and 16 kinds of fish, call the park home. Some of the animals you can find there are grizzly bears, bison, wolves, elk, and moose.

• Yellowstone is the only spot in the U.S. where bison have always lived since ancient times. Bison are a major attraction in the park, especially when they gather on the roads, causing traffic delays called “bison jams.” The herds in Yellowstone are unique because they’ve been there without interruption since ancient times.

• Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a super volcano that could have a huge eruption reaching magnitude 8. Over time, this super volcano has had three massive eruptions, with the first one happening about 2.1 million years ago. Even though the volcano is still active today, scientists keep a close watch on it to track any changes.

• Underneath certain areas of the park, there’s molten rock called magma, estimated to be only three to eight miles below Sour Creek Dome and eight to 12 miles below Mallard Lake Dome.

• Yellowstone has a lot of natural features related to hot water underground, like hot springs and geysers. The park takes care of over 10,000 of these features, which include things like hot springs, geysers, fumaroles (steam vents), mudpots (boiling mud), and travertine terraces (mineral formations).

• The bright colors you notice in the park are caused by countless tiny organisms called thermophiles. These tiny creatures thrive in hot temperatures and are too small to see without a microscope. When they gather together, they form colorful mats that make thermal features like hot springs and geysers look vivid and bright.

• Yellowstone’s hot springs are extremely hot and acidic, capable of dissolving a human body within a day. In 2016, a visitor accidentally fell into one of these hot springs, and within 24 hours, his body dissolved.

• The time between Old Faithful’s eruptions has gotten longer. Old Faithful is famous for its predictable eruptions, but in recent years, the time between each eruption has increased, making it less reliable.

• Yellowstone has between 700 to 3,000 earthquakes every year, but most of them are too tiny to notice. Even though it’s one of the places with a lot of earthquakes in the U.S., they’re usually so small that people don’t feel them.

• The temperature in the park can change a lot. It can go from really cold, below freezing, to very hot. The coldest temperature ever recorded there was -66 degrees Fahrenheit, and the hottest was 99 degrees.

FAQ About Yellowstone National Park

Brief History Of Yellowstone National Park