yellowstone: a brief overview slash geohistorical explanation

Yellowstone is basically a giant volcano. A supervolcano, even. There's still ash in Ohio from when it exploded last time, and the next eruption is overdue. I've told my family, if this thing blows, cut your losses and run, because I am all kinds of dead.

Geologically speaking, however, this makes the place very interesting. It's over the top of three massive calderas (which sounds like the name of a telenovela star, but isn't. It's a concave receded volcano-hole.). All the lava and gas and pressure comes steaming up through the snow to make cool things like geysers and hotpots and vents, and people and ungulates keep falling through them and being boiled to death. New cracks still open up today, even. Like, a hotpot opened up in the middle of a parking lot recently, and the Park Service just kind of gave up and put a fence around it.

Anyways. Historically speaking, the whole thing is kind of hilarious. For years there were all kinds of crazy stories about that Yellowstone River area. Jim Bridger, especially, would talk about "man-eating mud" and everyone would roll their eyes and say, "Yeah Bridge... and then it bit a great white shark in half" but then an expedition or something finally came out and stood at Old Faithful. They were so excited when it erupted that they "threw their hats in the air!" and promptly went back to Congress, who was super stoked to the point of declaring the area America's first national park. (This was in 1872. Wyoming wasn't even a state yet.*)

However, since the Park Service hadn't been invented yet, the U.S. Cavalry had to come in and protect the place from poachers and squatters and stagecoach bandits and the usual 19th-century kind of vagabonds. The king's horses and men were stationed in what is now known as Mammoth Hot Springs. (Literally a couple hundred yards from where I live now.**)

Eventually, though, they got rangers to do their job, and the stagecoaches turned to automobiles and snowcoaches, and then there was electricity and running water, and millions upon millions of tourists came. (And there is still zero cell phone coverage or WiFi, but to be honest, I kind of like it that way.) And so much history happens here that they actually have an official Yellowstone Historian, whose job I covet. And the whole park covers like a third of Wyoming, with a teense of Montana and Idaho, and except for the fact that it's haunted†, I like it here very much.

Next time I will tell you about all the surprising ways to snuff it in Yellowstone and about my unhealthy obsession with bison. Also the story of Truman Everett.

我想你们!

Kate

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*By the way, who was president in 1872? That's right. It was Grant. Not Roosevelt. Ahem.

**I finally figured out what state I live in. It's Wyoming. I'm a little disappointed, because I, like Captain Borodin, really wanted to live in Montana. But I'm very very close. I go to church and buy detergent in Gardiner, even.

†Yes, haunted! There is a whole book called Ghosts of Yellowstone. I'm kind of terrified to read it because my work is in the old Mammoth Hotel and there are three cemeteries within walking distance of my house.