Wyoming Yellowstone National Park map and highlights

The best way to get to Yellowstone National Park is to fly to Salt Lake city, Utah, and then start your journey by rented car, choosing an interesting and beautiful route. There are no problems with tickets to the city of Mormons - almost all American airlines fly there.

Yellowstone, Wyoming on the map. National Park Yellowstone (Wyoming state) on the map of USA.   

Far right: Old Faithful-Yellowstone's most  famous geyser. Park visitors count on its regularity, and approximately  every hour it delights with an impressive performance of water bursting  skyward.   

Facing page: The Yellowstone River roars down the falls and through the steep-walled Grand Canyon.   

Below: At cliff's edge, a small group of bison stand cloaked in steam.   

National Park Yellowstone, Wyoming   

Established: 1872   Acreage: 2,221,766

    

The world's first national  park—Yellowstone—is located in three states; 96 percent is in Wyoming,  three percent in Montana and one percent in Idaho. Yellowstone is a  treasure that inspires awe in travellers from around the globe. Although  New Zealand and Iceland are known for their geysers, nowhere in the  world are there as many active ones as in Yellowstone—200 to 250.

    

At the heart of Yellowstone's past, present  and future is volcanic activity. The magmatic heat from several  eruptions, ranging from two million to 600,000 years ago, still powers  the park's famous geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mud pots. Surface  water seeps down into porous rock layers to be heated under pressure and  then rises back up as geysers or hot springs. Old Faithful is the  world's best-known geyser, whose eruption intervals have long varied  around an average of 65 minutes. The world's largest geyser, Steamboat,  erupts at irregular intervals of days to years.

    

Yellowstone has the highest concentration of  large and small mammals in the lower 48 states, including the American  bison, elk, grizzly and black bears, coyotes, bighorn sheep, mule deer,  squirrels and marmots. Bird species include osprey, pelican, trumpeter  swan and green-wing teal. In addition, Yellowstone is home to 11 species  of fish, five species of reptiles and four species of amphibians. The  park also boasts a variety of vegetation types, from near-desert  vegetation to subalpine meadows and forests. Although the park has 370  miles of paved roads, the best way to enjoy Yellowstone is on the 1000  miles of trails through the backcountry.

    

Ancient campsites and stone artifacts found  in the park indicate that man has lived on the Yellowstone Plateau for  most of the 8500 years since the last Ice Age. At the time written  records began (a mere 150 years ago), the only Indians living in the  park area were a mixed group of Shoshone and Bannock who, lacking the  horses and guns necessary to compete with neighboring tribes, had  retreated into the mountains to live furtive, impoverished lives.  Yellowstone's recent history resonates with colorful tales of fur  trappers, miners, surveyors, photographers and artists. The briefly  flourishing fur trade in the Rocky Mountains brought such men as John  Colter, Jim Bridger and Joe Meek into the area, but a growing scarcity  of good furs, along with changing fashions, ended the fur trade  around 1840. Twenty years later, the discovery of gold in Montana  brought in exploring parties of miners. In 1869, a different type of  exploration, based on curiosity, began. William Henry Jackson's  photographs and Thomas Moran's sketches influenced Congress to establish  the park, an act which influenced countries throughout the world to  preserve their own natural treasures. The disasterous forest fires of  1988 burned one million acres, 1600 square miles of Yellowstone's  timberland—nearly half of the park's area.