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Yellowstone: World’s First National Park | National Geographic


Yellowstone National Park is huge
encompassing two million acres in 1872
Congress made it the world’s first
national park it is hidden within one of
the most remote places in the lower 48
it’s bigger than Rhode Island and
Delaware combined right here no Road in
any direction for twenty-two miles a
canyon 20 miles long 17 rivers dissect
the wilderness sweeping grasslands more
than enough to sustain Yellowstone’s
4,000 bison yet for all you can see the
real story behind Yellowstone is in what
you can’t see here just underground lies
one of the world’s largest volcanoes it
reveals itself at the surface in
menacing ways with mud pots that belch
toxic gas and fumaroles that hiss with
acid vapor superheated pools of water
steam vents and geysers attract some
three million tourists a year few
understand that Old Faithful won’t be
faithful forever and one day the volcano
below may erupt underneath Yellowstone’s
surface just four miles down is a
massive cauldron of magma its total
volume enough to fill more than three
Lake Michigan’s
it’s been 640,000 years since it last
erupted and no one knows if or when it
will explode again Yellowstone is also
home to 70 species of mammal elk and
bison are just two of them and
Yellowstone is home to one of the
greatest wildlife reintroduction success
stories the gray wolf wolves here were
wiped out in the 1940s under an old
predator eradication program they were
reintroduced in 1995 and the Wolves have
an influence on Yellowstone’s elk and
bison populations by preying on elk and
bison they keep the populations of these
herbivores at a stable level which in
turn helps keep Yellowstone ecosystems
healthy life continues on Yellowstone
surface and the molten earth beneath
seemingly moves with a life of its own
and present day visitors can witness the
geologic splendor of its changes
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