Yellowstone News and Information

  The mystery of the Fountain Hotel in Yellowstone National Park

Unsolved mystery still haunts Fountain Hotel  

  The Queen’s Laundry—the oldest historic building in Yellowstone National Park Release Date: April 19, 2021 Yellowstone is dotted with historic places.  But did you know that the oldest building that is still standing, built 140 years ago, was constructed because of a thermal spring?  Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Annie Carlson, Research Coordinator at the Yellowstone Center for Resources, Yellowstone National Park. Queen's Laundry bathhouse, in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park.  Building began under superintendent Philetus Norris in 1881 but was never finished. (Credit: Jim Peaco, Yellowstone National Park. Public domain.) Every historic building in Yellowstone has a story to tell. You may be familiar with the impressive Old Faithful Inn or Fort Yellowstone’s t

  Yellowstone’s Cool Thermal Areas Release Date: April 5, 2021 Yes, some of Yellowstone’s thermal areas are cool—as in, no longer hot.  Cooling is part of the “life cycle” of a thermal area.  And just as it’s important to keep track of where thermal areas warm up, it’s also important to keep track of where they are cooling down. Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from R. Greg Vaughan, research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey. We do not define the habitat of wolves just by observing where a wolf pack may be standing at any given moment; they move around.  Similarly, you can think of a thermal area as the “habitat” of individual thermal features, like geysers and hot springs.  Hot fluids also move around (underground), so just because a patch of ground in Yellowstone is either warm or cool d

Preserving the legacy of geologic mapping in Yellowstone Release Date: March 15, 2021 Before the age of cheap computers, handheld GPS, and other innovations, geologic mapping was done with a compass, paper, and pencil.  An effort is underway to digitally preserve and publish these valuable geologic maps, some of which depict Yellowstone thermal areas at a very fine scale! Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from Dakota Churchill, contractor with the USGS and student at UC Berkeley. In the 1960s and 70s, a group of  USGS Geological survey scientists began to tackle the challenge of mapping Yellowstone.   The team included Bob Christensen, Don White, Robert Fournier, Alfred Truesdell, and L.J. Patrick Muffler, and they spent every summer between 1966 and 1971 doing fieldwork in Yellowstone. This was a huge

Yellowstone's Lower Geyser Basin may have looked much different 4,000 years ago     The sunset is reflected in pools along the Firehole Lake Drive at the eastern edge of the Lower Geyser Basin. Neal Herbert/National Park Service