Yellowstone National Park

About

Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world, established in 1872, and it still sets the standard for wild American landscapes. Its 3,468 square miles span parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, holding lakes, deep canyons, rivers, and mountain ranges across a caldera that quietly ranks as the largest supervolcano on the continent.

The park contains roughly half of the world’s active geysers, more than 10,000 hydrothermal features, and an average of 2,000 earthquakes per year. Old Faithful is the most famous geyser, but the Grand Prismatic Spring, Mammoth Hot Springs, and the Norris Geyser Basin are every bit as striking. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, with its Lower Falls and vivid yellow walls, gives the park its name.

Wildlife viewing here is among the best in North America. Yellowstone is home to grizzly and black bears, gray wolves, lynx, bald eagles, and a bison herd of more than 3,700 animals, one of the oldest continuously wild populations in the country. Lamar and Hayden valleys are the prime early-morning viewing corridors.

A Yellowstone road trip is often combined with Grand Teton just to the south, making an ideal multi-park retreat. Smaller guided tours reach the geyser basins at sunrise and the valleys at dusk, which is when the park genuinely comes alive.