WITHSizzling geysers, bubbling mud pots, shaggy herds of bison, every US visitor wants to see that at least once. Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains is wilder than ever. 8987 square kilometers, an incomparable, huge wilderness, a good 100 kilometers wide, 87 kilometers long, a rugged panorama of forests, lakes, mountains, valleys. A wild country that stretches across the states of Wyoming and two corners of Idaho and Montana.
The park owes its name to the Yellowstone River. What makes it special are its more than 10,000 hot springs, 300 of which are hissing geysers. The most famous and popular is the “Old Faithful”, which spits out fountains of water every 60 to 90 minutes.
The bubbling and smacking mud pots, also known as “mud pods” in English, are also exceptional. Deep beneath the Yellowstone territory is an active volcano, a vast chamber of magma simmering its way up through fissures in the earth’s crust.
Source: Infographic WORLD
Yellowstone National Park is now celebrating its 150th birthday. On March 1, 1872, then-US President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Protection Act. Yellowstone was “dedicated as a public park or amusement park for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations.”
Bison and grizzlies in the world’s oldest national park
This makes it the oldest national park in the world. Today it is once again home to the famous herds of bison, grizzly bears, moose and wolves, mountain lions and coyotes. It didn’t look like it for 80 years.
The idea of protecting wild land from development initially caused excitement and irritation. But over the years, tourism potential was also discovered: in 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad opened up Yellowstone National Park, and in 1904 the first overnight hostel opened: the “Old Faithful Inn”, even with electricity. In 1915, visitors were allowed to drive cars into the park. The Yellowstone degenerated into the absurd Wild West show with the Winchester rifle.
The “Old Faithful Inn” in the 1920s: vacationers with horses in front of the inn
Quelle: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock
The “Old Faithful Inn” 2010: Tourists wait in front of the inn for the Old Faithful geyser to erupt
What: pa/imageBROKER/Michael Weber
Within the park, the “wanton destruction of fish and game” and the commercial use of such game were forbidden. But nobody stuck to it. The inaccessible no man’s land was plundered. Profiteering fur hunters with rifles traveled in groups from all over the country. A single one of them could kill up to 50 elk and bison in one day. Thousands of skinned animal carcasses littered the slopes.
Not only bison, but also elk and bighorn sheep were slaughtered en masse until 1916 when the US cavalry was called in to help. From then on, they patrolled the park for a good 30 years, but were unable to do much due to the inaccessibility and size of the area.
Yellowstone owes Corona rush to visitors
Incidentally, the first vacationers in the national park didn’t behave much better either: they destroyed geyser cones, carved their names into the rocks and left their rubbish everywhere. For decades, grizzly bears have been lured by tons of leftover food. For the amusement of visitors, large garbage dumps were converted into theaters where tourists sat in bleachers to watch the famous bear shows on summer evenings.
The omnivorous animals quickly adapted to the human presence and the titbits served on the plate, although they typically feed on spawning cutthroat trout in the rivers and pinecone seeds in the forests. These bear shows were only banned in the early 1970s.
Yellowstone is the only place in the United States where wild bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times
Quelle: Getty Images/Dan Anderson
At the same time, park rangers tried to save the last wild herd of 23 bison, once 50 million specimens on the American continent. The animals found refuge in the heavily guarded Pelican Valley. Park managers were thus able to save the last bison from extinction.
To avoid inbreeding, a bull and seven cows were released from Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo in 1896. Today, Yellowstone is the only place in the United States where wild bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times. Today, 5,400 animals move through the park in two huge herds.
Grizzly bears, whose numbers in the park dropped to just 136 in the 1970s, have also rebounded. Wolves that were wiped out in the 1920s were reintroduced in 1995. Today, 90 Yellowstone wolves live in the park.
Protected by their mother, two young grizzly bears explore the area
What: pa/robertharding/James Hager
Most visitors marvel at nature from roadside cars. The pandemic, of all things, is causing a rush of people to the park. In 2021 there were almost 4.9 million – a good 800,000 more than before the pandemic. This year, Yellowstone could surpass five million visitors for the park’s 150th anniversary. Yellowstone National Park offers its visitors kayaking, fly fishing, rock climbing, horseback riding, hiking or guided ranger tours.
This can cause traffic congestion in summer. However, the roads and trails, where most tourists stay, make up only about 2 percent of the 8,900-square-kilometer park. According to surveys, around 80 percent of Yellowstone visitors should never be more than a quarter of an hour away from their vehicle. So most of Yellowstone remains deserted and wild.
Here a mother bear goes hunting for tourists
A mother bear made things clear on a bridge in Yellowstone National Park. Photo tourists who dared to get too close to their offspring drove them out of their territory.