Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Yellowstone National Park

Starting point is 00:00:00 Located in the state of Wyoming and a little bit of Montana and Idaho lies one of the greatest national parks on earth, Yellowstone. In the 19th century, Yellowstone was declared the first national park in the world. However, what really makes Yellowstone special actually dates back millions of years. The geologic circumstances that led to the creation of Yellowstone today make it one of the most visited parks in the world. Learn more about Yellowstone, its history, and possible future on this episode of Everything Everywhere. daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? Throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and

Starting point is 00:00:57 tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. If you've been fortunate enough to visit Yellowstone, you know just how special of a place it is. And if you haven't yet been to Yellowstone, you still probably know enough about it to realize its significance. To understand why Yellowstone is so special, you have to understand the geology behind its creation. The thing that makes Yellowstone what it is is known as a mantle plume, or a hot spot. The earth is largely made up of three parts, the crust, the mantle, and the core. The crust is very thin and cool, whereas the mantle is very thick and hot. For the most part, mantle and the crust are separate. However, there are a few places on the planet where a hot

Starting point is 00:01:51 mantle plume will come up and poke through the crust. This is known as a hotspot. You're probably familiar with other hotspots. When they occur in the ocean, they usually create a chain of islands as the oceanic tectonic plate passes over the hotspot. The two most famous ones are the Hawaiian Islands and the Canary Islands. However, when it occurs over a continental tectonic plate, you obviously don't get a chain of islands. The mantle plume will melt the continental crust, and instead of a chain of volcanic islands, you just get a chain of volcanoes. In the case of Yellowstone, this movement created a track of volcanic activity that stretches across southern Idaho, which is marked by the Snake River Plain. The mantle plume has been roughly located under what is today

Starting point is 00:02:40 Yellowstone for about two million years. The Yellowstone volcano has erupted several, times in the past, and it has done so catastrophically. The past Yellowstone eruptions have been so great that they have been classified on the volcanic explosivity index as an eight, the highest possible value. This classifies it as a supervolcano. To give you an idea of how powerful an eruption that is, I've previously done episodes on the eruption of Krakatoa and Mount Tambora in Indonesia. These were the two largest volcanic eruptions in recorded human history. Krakatoa only registered a six, and Tambora, which was even bigger, registered only a seven. VEI is measured based on the matter that was ejected by the volcano, and each rank on the index

Starting point is 00:03:32 is ten times larger than the number before it. The most recent Yellowstone eruption was known as the Lava Creek Tuff, which took place about 640,000 years. ago. The lava creek tough was an enormous eruption, an estimated 1,000 cubic kilometers, or 240 cubic miles of ejecta, was expelled from the volcano. That eruption created the Yellowstone Caldera,

Starting point is 00:03:58 which forms the heart of the park today. Prior similar eruptions took place 1.3 million years ago and 2.1 million years ago. Since the last supervolcano eruption, 640,000 years ago, there have been numerous smaller volcanoes. events. These include rhyolithic lava flows which have filled part of the caldera and basaltic lava flows outside the caldera. The heat of the mantle plume has been shaping the park and is responsible for

Starting point is 00:04:24 creating the most well-known feature of the park today. Geysers. Geysers are geothermal features that periodically eject a column of hot water and steam into the air due to the underground buildup of pressure from superheated water. This occurs when water deep within the earth is heated by magma, causing it to become pressurized and forcefully expelled through surface vents. There are several places in the world where you can find geysers, including Iceland, Chile, New Zealand, and Russia. However, over half of the world's geysers are located in Yellowstone National Park. The best-known geyser in Yellowstone is Old Faithful. Old Faithful is known for its predictable eruptions, which occur approximately every 90 minutes and shoots water up to 180 feet

Starting point is 00:05:10 into the air. In addition to geysers, there are several other geothermal features in the park, including hot springs. The largest and best-known hot spring in the park is Grand Prismatic Spring. It's the third largest hot spring in the world after frying pan lake in New Zealand and boiling lake on the island of Dominica. It gets its name from the bright colors around the edges of the spring, which are the result of microbial mats. The geologic wonders of Yellowstone don't stop with the geothermal features. Within the park is also the Yellowstone River, on which is the very picturesque Yellowstone Falls. Yellowstone Falls is the largest waterfall in the Rocky Mountains by volume, and at 308 feet or 94 meters, it is twice the height of Niagara Falls. Immediately downstream

Starting point is 00:05:59 from the falls is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It's 24 miles or 39 kilometers long, about 1,000 feet or 300 meters deep and about a half a mile or 800 meters wide. It should come as no surprise that such a unique environment would have attracted humans. The first evidence of a human presence in Yellowstone goes back about 11,000 years. Archaeological evidence such as stone tools and other artifacts indicate that Native American tribes use the area for hunting, fishing, and gathering. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, several tribes, including the Shoshone, Banach, Blackfeet, Crow, and Nez Perst lived in or traveled through the Yellowstone region.

Starting point is 00:06:41 The area was known for its thermal features, and many tribes had myths and legends about the geysers and hot springs. The first recorded European to enter the Yellowstone area was John Coulter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who explored the region in 1807 and 1808. His descriptions of the geothermal features were initially met with skepticism and jokingly called Coulter's Hell. The name Yellowstone is believed to have come from the Minotari tribe. When French fur traders came to the region in the early 19th century, they asked the local people the name of the river, and they replied, Mizi Adazi, which translates literally as rock yellow river.

Starting point is 00:07:20 The French translated it to Roche Joan, which eventually became Yellowstone in English. Subsequent explorers, including Jim Bridger and Osborne Russell, provided more accounts of Yellowstone's wonders. These reports slowly gained credibility and sparked interest in further exploration. One of the most significant expeditions was led by geologist Ferdinand Hayden. His expedition, which included a photographer, William Henry Jackson, and artist Thomas Moran, documented the area's geothermal features, wildlife and landscapes. Their findings, images, and paintings were crucial in convincing Congress to preserve Yellowstone as a national park.

Starting point is 00:07:58 Based on the compelling reports coming from the Hayden Expedition, Congress passed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, and President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law on March 1, 1872, creating the world's first national park. When Yellowstone was established as a park, nothing like this had ever been done before in history. There was no other park that they could point to and use as a template. So the decision was made to put one of the only organizations the government had at their disposal to manage the park, the U.S. Army. The Army took control of the park's management in 1886, and initially, given how few people lived or visited, there was little to do. Their primary concerns were poaching and vandalism.

Starting point is 00:08:43 Poaching was a serious problem, however. The naturalist George Bird Grinnell noted that during the winter of 1874 and 1875, no fewer than three, 3,000 bison, mule deer, and elk were killed in the park. The army eventually built Fort Yellowstone at Mammoth Hot Springs to house all the soldiers. One of the things the army did do was block access to Yellowstone to all of the Native American tribes that had hunted and transited through the area since time immemorial. The first train station to the park was built in 1883 in Livingston, Montana by the Northern Pacific Railroad. That year, a record 5,000 people visited Yellowstone.

Starting point is 00:09:25 By the early 20th century, Yellowstone is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination. In 1904, the Old Faithful Lodge opened up with in sight of the Old Faithful Geyser. It was one of the first park hotels built in the National Park Service rustic style. Its lobby is made entirely out of logs, and it has an 85-foot or 26-meter stone fireplace. One of the challenges park administrators have always had was balancing the park's needs. In 1914, Congress passed legislation ordering the eradication of wolves in the park to protect elk and bison. Within a few decades, wolves were almost extinct in the park. While it did protect the large animals that people came to see, it also removed the Aprex predator from the park and

Starting point is 00:10:12 imbalance the ecosystem. This allowed more sick and weak animals to flourish, which otherwise would have been hunted down. This move was also supported by ranchers neighboring the park who had their cattle killed by wolves. Wolves weren't reintroduced to Yellowstone until 1995. Automobiles were first allowed in the area in 1915, but the area was not really suited for him at that time. All the roads were still dirt and getting around the park was difficult, but 1,000 cars did enter the park that year. In 1916, the park fell under the management of the newly created National Park Service. The Great Depression saw a drop in visitors and an explosion in construction.

Starting point is 00:10:54 Much of the park's infrastructure was initially built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during that period. One of the biggest events ever to have happened in the park were the wildfires that took place in 1998. The summer of 1998 saw the worst drought in the park's history. Hundreds of fires broke out in the park, several of which merged to create massive wildfires. For decades, the policy of the Park Service was to suppress all forest fires. This resulted in extremely thick underbrush to develop, which normally would have been burned away.

Starting point is 00:11:28 Because there was so much fuel, the fires burned far hotter than they otherwise would have. Western pine forests are designed to burn on a regular basis. However, when they burn as hot as the yellow fires did, they can basically sterilize everything, making it difficult for life to return. During my first visit Yellowstone in 2005, we could still see the evidence of the fires that took place 17 years earlier. Almost nothing had grown back and it still looked like the fires had just taken place the year before. Almost 150 years after it was established as a national park, Yellowstone has kept its claim of being the premier national park in the United States. Today, the park will get over 4 million visitors a year. In 1978, when they created the very first UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Yellowstone was in the inaugural group of sites along with the Galapagos Islands.

Starting point is 00:12:24 One issue that many people fret about, because there's been so many TV documentaries on the subject, is whether Yellowstone could erupt as a super volcano in the future. The odds of this happening are very, very low. The U.S. Geological Survey calculated the annual probability of a large cost, Aldera forming eruption at Yellowstone to be about 1 in 730,000, which is less than 0.00014%. If there were volcanic activity in Yellowstone, it probably wouldn't happen overnight. It would take years and perhaps centuries for the volcano to form, and much of the volcanic activity would be lower-level activity, not a super-volcanic eruption. So a Yellowstone super volcanic eruption is something you can probably take off your list of things to worry about.

Starting point is 00:13:16 I've personally been to a lot of national parks around the world. I've been to Kakadu, Kruger, Nahani, and the Galapagos, and I can say that Yellowstone is right up there amongst the greatest national parks in the world. Not only is it one of the top locations in the world for geological features, but it is arguably the best place in North America to see megafauna. All of these things makes Yellowstone deserving of the title of the world's first National Park. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers.

Starting point is 00:13:59 Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Yellowstone National Park

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.