What was Yellowstone like before it was a national park?
Early historyFor more than 10,000 years before Yellowstone's designation as a park, Native American people lived, hunted, fished, gathered plants, quarried obsidian, and used thermal water for religious and medicinal purposes.
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We sometimes think of Yellowstone as an untouched landscape, but humans have been present in the area for over ten thousand years! The history and traditions of Indigenous people in Yellowstone are as rich as the landscape itself.
Yellowstone National Park - 1872On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant designated Yellowstone as the first national park in the United States and the world. Today, the park is home to the world's largest collection of geysers, including the iconic Old Faithful.
As pressure is released, gases dissolved in the magma come out of solution, turning the magma into a boiling froth. The total energy released would be equivalent to an 875,000 megaton explosion. The shockwave would kill 90,000 people. Most of the lava would fall back into the crater.
55 million to 40 million years agoAt times the volcanoes were violent and covered the countryside with rocks, cinders, and ash. Sometimes the entire Yellowstone region was covered with volcanic debris. Between eruptions, there were often long periods of quiet, long enough for forests to grow.
From the book: “In 1872 the United States Congress created at Yellowstone in Wyoming the world's first national park. Three years later Mackinac Island, Michigan, became the site of the second.
The smallest park is Gateway Arch National Park, Missouri, at 192.83 acres (0.7804 km2). The total area protected by national parks is approximately 52.4 million acres (212,000 km2), for an average of 833 thousand acres (3,370 km2) but a median of only 220 thousand acres (890 km2).