Yellowstone was once home to the Sheepeaters, a little known tribe of
Indians. They were a Shoshone clan that let time and progress pass
them by, living a pre-horse lifestyle long after their neighbors had made
the horse an integral part of their culture. They were small of
stature, reclusive by nature, and used dog-pulled travois to transport their
few belongings. Although their diet included roots, berries, and other
animals, they were called Sheepeaters because of the bighorn sheep they
hunted. Their only houses were wickiups -- temporary shelters made of
aspen poles covered with pine bows. The Sheepeaters were decimated by
white diseases, especially small pox. By the 1870's there were no
Sheepeaters living in the Park and the few survivors had vanished into the
Shoshone or Bannock peoples.
The Park was established in 1872, and most of its history consists of the
various ways people have tried to make a profit from it -- all interesting,
but also somewhat sad. One group of early visitors, however, passed
through the park in pursuit of neither scenery nor power. In 1877
Chief Joseph's band of Nez Perce fled westward from their homeland in Oregon
in a desperate bid for Canada and freedom. They passed through
Yellowstone on the way, entering from the west and exiting to the east, in a
two-week visit that created quite a bit of excitement for the Park's
tourists.
Mrs. George Cowan recorded how her party was taken hostage
and forced to trade their well fed and rested horses for the Nez Perce's
broken down mounts. Her husband was shot in the altercation and Mrs.
Cowan spent the night as a captive, thinking her husband was dead.
When she wrote of her experiences later, she described Chief Joseph sitting
by the fire, depicting him as somber and silent, grave and dignified, very
much a personification of the "noble red man." Cowan and her fellow
captives were soon released and she was reunited with her wounded husband.
Although the Nez Perce raided Yellowstone and burned the Baronett Bridge,
their goal was escape not destruction, and they left behind only two white
men dead and several more wounded.
Yellowstone was once derided as a mountain man's hoax -- for very good
reasons. It has such a concentration of spectacular natural phenomena
that it can seem like "a colossal, steam-operated freak show" as Aubrey
Haines expressed it. When two park employees set up a big crank handle
next to Old Faithful and cranked madly through one of its eruptions, park
officials did not take it as a joke and fired them. Anyway, here are a
few completely natural bells and whistles which may not have received top
billing, but Wyoming citizens are rather proud of.
While stopped at Old Faithful, check out Sponge Geyser, one of forty geysers
on the walking trail around Geyser Hill. It spits its mouthful of
water a whole nine inches into the air when it erupts, leaving a puddle that
can be wiped up with a kitchen sponge. Only slightly more spectacular
two foot eruptions come from Radiator Geyser, so named because the area was
once a parking lot, and this poor little geyser had the misfortune of being
born underneath a parked car, where it was at first mistaken for an
overheated radiator. Its big sister Daisy is much more predictable and
spectacular, blowing water seventy-five feet high at a sharp angle about
every ninety minutes.
The Norris Geyser Basin is one of the hottest
pieces of ground in the world, with a subterranean temperature of 401
degrees Fahrenheit only 265 feet below ground. It has lots of little,
acidic geysers that come and go too fast to gain fame. Steamboat
Geyser on the back side of the Basin normally blows about forty feet high,
but occasionally lets loose a blast that reaches almost ten times as high
and lasts twenty minutes.
Mammoth Hot Springs' terraces are not as
active as they used to be, but they still accumulate an astonishing two tons
of travertine (calcium carbonate) each day. The Thomas Moran
watercolors and W. H. Jackson photographs in the local Albright Visitor
Center are well worth stopping to see.
Specimen Ridge is a monument to a centuries-long
contest between forest and volcano, with the volcano burying the forest in
ash and mud and the forest growing back over the top. Silica from the
volcanic debris has turned the buried trees to stone. Scientists have
found 27 different layers of buried forests, containing maple, redwood,
magnolia, oak, and walnut trees. Many of these trees, uncovered by
erosion, are still standing. Rangers lead hikes
into the area each summer.
The Mud Volcano Area just north of Yellowstone Lake
is a stinky but fun place to visit. Black Dragon's cauldron blasts hot
water through seething black mud, and Dragon's Mouth rumbles and roars while
belching steam and a "flashing tongue of water" out of a cavernous dark
hole. It’s especially eerie at twilight.
Yellowstone is constantly changing since all its hot water spots are
interconnected through a natural, park-wide, subterranean plumbing system.
If the sights we mentioned no longer exist by the time you get there, don’t
be too surprised. Please pick out a few new favorites of your own.
The entire park sits over a huge bubble of magma, with a surface crust only
two to six miles thick (the world average is twenty-five miles.)
Sometime in the near future Yellowstone Lake could conceivably switch back
to its old role, becoming once more the mouth of an active volcano. So
while you visit Yellowstone, don't forget to appreciate it for the fragile,
transitory wonder that it is. |
