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Yellowstone National Park (Yellowstone National Park or simply Yellowstone) is the oldest and one of the most famous national parks in the United States.
Yellowstone is located on the territory of three states – Wyoming (most of the park, about 96% of the total area), Idaho and Montana. The park covers 8,983 square kilometers (more than Delaware or Rhode Island); it extends 101 kilometers from north to south and 87 kilometers from west to east. The highest point of Yellowstone is Eagle Peak (3,466 meters above sea level) and the lowest is the bank of the Reese Creek (1,610 meters).
Within the park you can see rivers and lakes, valleys and mountain ranges, forests and meadows, canyons and waterfalls, numerous hot springs and geysers, and one of the largest petrified forests in the world. The reserve is known, among other things, for its extraordinary diversity of fauna and flora.
Yellowstone National Park is located at the headwaters of the river of the same name (from which it got its name). The river, in turn, was so named by Native Indians (and later by American pioneers) after the yellow rocks (Yellowstone) found in one of the canyons of the future reserve.
Yellowstone National Park attracts millions of tourists, for whom there is a comfortable and developed infrastructure.
Most of the park is located on the Yellowstone Plateau, the average height of which is about 2,400 meters above sea level, and the highest point of the plateau (but not of the entire reserve) is Mount Washburn, 3,122 meters. The plateau is surrounded by the Rocky Mountain ranges of Gallatin to the northwest, Birtut to the north, Absaroka to the east, Titon to the south, and Madison to the southwest and west.
Within the park is a huge (about fifty-five by seventy-two kilometers) caldera (volcanic basin) formed by several catastrophic eruptions of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the last of which occurred about six hundred and forty thousand years ago. Volcanic activity in the Yellowstone area continues to this day, there are many small earthquakes occurring all the time, even forming new volcanic cones. It is the proximity to the surface of the magma (the so-called “hot spot”) causes the activity of numerous geysers, hot springs and mud volcanoes, which have brought world fame to Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone is home to half of all the hot springs in the world. There are over one thousand two hundred and fifty geysers, almost five hundred of which are active. The largest of them – “Steamboat”, the highest geyser in the world (it throws a column of steam and hot water over ninety meters).
